Let’s give away the ending … I believe fiction will last forever, in the everlasting life all Christians can anticipate, for the glory of God, and the delight of His servants.

Notice I said that “I believe” this. Among Christians, this is definitely a secondary issue!

Moreover, it’s nothing we can be absolutely certain about, based on Scripture, our only testimony about the coming afterlife. Scripture doesn’t say fiction will inhabit the New Heavens and New Earth, any more than it says we’ll have certain ice-cream flavors, or ponies, or spaceships, or a highly welcome big-budget remake of The Voyage of the Dawn Treader film (my pick for executive producer: C.S. Lewis himself).

Scripture also doesn’t directly say we won’t have any of these things. That in itself gives support to speculation, if it doesn’t contradict what God has told us.

However, we have more Biblical evidence that allows highly educated guesses in favor of fiction. We don’t need direct mentions of what the New Earth will include. That would take too long, and perhaps even spoil too many surprises. We also don’t need that because what God has told us about the After-world is enough to apply to other things we might hope God would preserve.

Throughout the past parts of this series, I’ve hoped to review what we do know from Scripture about the New Earth:

1. Christians have accepted many myths about the afterlife, among them that it’s a bodiless existence, or that physical things have no place there, or that we should not even bother with the issue (often citing “no eye has seen …” from 1 Cor. 2:9).
2. Scripture does directly predict much about the New Earth, including that it will be physical, and that God will resurrect His creation itself, as He will resurrect us. In rightly anticipating our eternal Home, we are anticipating the Homeowner!
3. The Bible itself, God’s Word, will last forever. It’s the only “story” (the true Story) that God has clearly promised to preserve. For all the eons in which God’s people work and worship Him, we’ll have His record of how He saved us from our evils.

All those lay the foundation to claim this: that many stories we love, perhaps even those we’ve written, will continue to bless others, and honor the ultimate Author, forever.

This column will begin several more reasons why. I hope to finish that list, next week.

Splendor of kings, under the King

“By its light will the nations walk, and the kings of the earth will bring their glory into it,” says the apostle John, privileged to see the New Jerusalem city after its touchdown on New Earth. “And its gates will never be shut by day—and there will be no night there. They will bring into it the glory and the honor of the nations.” (Rev. 21:24-26)

Isaiah also specifically prophesied several ways in which Earth’s peoples, from many nations, will worship the Lord: with their ships, trade, national cultures, precious metals like gold and silver, incenses, trees, and animals (all throughout Isaiah 60).

If all those — either re-created, or more likely left over from what was “exposed” after God’s sin-purging fire (2 Peter 3:10) — could be used for worship, why not stories?

1. God loves stories, even speculative ones.

God’s whole Word is a “speculative” story, of which our stories can only be dim copies. (This is also true of any story with messianic elements, as Fred Warren noted Tuesday!) His Word has set that precedent. For Him, the “fantastic” and miraculous is typical.

2. We can worship Him now through stories and imagination.

Speculative Faith is based on this premise, which I need not re-present here. Becky has been exploring this more directly, most recently: the truth that while we enjoy God in many different ways, through many stories and art forms, speculative fiction is unique.

Given the multiple callings in which people can glorify God now, in much the same ways they would have if evil had never entered the world, I do take as axiomatic that we’ll be able to do many of these same tasks right on into the future ages. Only if the Bible says no, such-and-such will be fulfilled then, should we not anticipate that (and there’s at least one way we honor Him now that we can’t do then: human marriage — Matt 22:23-33).

3. Worship in many different ways is our destiny on New Earth.

Nowadays many people have rebutted the notion that all a “body” has to do all “day” in Heaven is to float on clouds (which causes severe angst among all those people who staunchly defend the Cloud Theory). But we need to replace any misconceptions with truth — not with implications that we needn’t bother about such things, or even worse, with notions that Christians must feed the poor, open our church boundaries, etc., and bring heaven to Earth as a “shalom” program of peace, sans the Prince of Peace.

What we do find in Scripture is stunning and inspiring: that our Old-Earth worship will be much like our New-Earth worship. Adding onto the above-referenced texts about kings bringing their glories into the New Jerusalem, we find Paul directly tying a God-exalting work ethic here to what we have awaiting there, our inheritance: “Whatever you do, work heartily, as for the Lord and not for men, knowing that from the Lord you will receive the inheritance as your reward. You are serving the Lord Christ.” (Col. 3:23-24)

Theologian Anthony Hoekema comments on that relation between this world and that:

If there is continuity as well as discontinuity between this earth and the new earth, we must work hard to develop our gifts and talents, and to come as close as we can to producing, in the strength of the Spirit, a Christian culture today. Through our kingdom service, the building materials for the new earth are now being gathered. Bibles are being translated, peoples are being evangelized, believers are being renewed, and cultures are being transformed. Only eternity will reveal the full significance of what has been done for Christ here on earth.

_{From “Heaven: Not Just an Eternal Day Off,” Christianity Today, June 1, 2003}

That definitely fits with the true Biblical “prosperity gospel” of sacrificing now to obtain Christ’s rewards later. It also fits with the belief in honoring Him in all we do, not just the “spiritual” stuff, because good work in itself exalts Him. And for the lover of stories, this means we make our stories the best, as beautiful and truthful as we can, because excellence reflects His Excellency.

Moreover, as I’m fond of remarking, of all the varying kinds of stories, it is speculative fiction that is destined to have a more-direct fulfillment in the New Earth. Every day will bring wonder, excitement, and discovery, and what had been previously described as “otherworldly” will have become contemporary.  Whether that means we’ll get to have spaceships and outer-space colonies, I don’t know. But nothing opposes this. And if we suspect God may disapprove of these things, we should trim them from our stories now.

If anything, my guess is that on New Earth, it will be romance stories, based on human marriage that will then be fulfilled by the union between Christ and His Church (which marriage symbolized all along, Eph. 5:31-32), that will seem defunct and odd!

4. While we can’t bring any of our possessions beyond death, God can.

More than a vision: in Ezekiel 37, God showed His prophet how he brought back to life a field full of dead bones.

“We brought nothing into the world, and we cannot take anything out of the world,” the apostle Paul reminds Timothy, and us (1 Timothy 6:7). This, along with Paul’s other strong words against confusing the means of Things as an end of themselves, should head off any of our sin-sourced desires to abuse God’s good gifts, and ignore the Giver.

It should also remind us that in a way, the “there are no U-Hauls behind hearses” lines is true. We don’t even get to bring our bodies when we die. Sin will split our bodies and souls — that’s a nasty consequence of living in a presently cursed and decaying world.

But that split is temporary. God is a God of resurrection: Christ’s, ours, and creation’s.

After our resurrection, might we simply resume our God-honoring callings right where we left off? That, along with the resurrection issue, is where I’ll pick up next week.

Sunday morning Fred posted a lovely series of Advent readings and Scriptures, and yesterday he posted on Hope ( I swear, we didn’t plan this). Now, I gotta say, just as over the last decade I’ve grown incredibly fond of Tenebrae (a service of darkness to be held the Friday night before Resurrection Sunday and commemorates Christ’s death), over the last few years I’ve begun growing fond of Advent, the Season of Perpetual Suspense. Part of me appreciates the sobriety of it; part of me enjoys the focus it brings to the rancorous rush of Christmas Spirit; and part of me enjoys the reminder of our deep, deep roots that go back as far as the Garden where God promised a woman her son would destroy her family’s greatest and oldest foe.

And a good part of me craves the suspense. I’m that kid who finds the thrill of “Something’s coming” as much as “It’s here. Now.” I count the months to my next birthday, the days till Christmas, and the remaining weeks of school (or summer). I won’t ask what my gifts are and will never peek; and don’t you dare tell me the end of a story I haven’t read or seen. Action-packed or dialogue-driven, the story will keep me spellbound as long as it holds that promise of a pay-off well worth the wait.

Just you wait, the writer says. Just you wait, I’ll show you something you never would’ve thought.

And because I’m a trusting reader, I believe that promise, and sit on the very, very edge of my seat, never reading fast enough, never questioning the highs and lows, never doubting when all seems lost.

Because you, dear writer, have promised me. My hope is in your delivery.

Steven James speaks regularly about maintaining suspense: Every word is a promise, he says, and every promise must be delivered by the end of the book.

Every story, then, is an Advent. Characters become the descendants of a long line of waiting for something; readers become active participants anxiously expecting something terrible or wonderful, all longing for one thing. And as the story races on, the tension builds, climbing higher and higher until at last the opposing forces collide and crash down on one another. At that point, James says, you must meet or exceed the reader’s expectation.

Maybe it’s a little silly, comparing the anxious impatience of a child waiting for over a month Christmas morning and the glorious wake of an unseen visitor or the 400-year, anguished longing of Israel as they awaited God’s silence to end and the Messiah’s reign to begin to the white-knuckled grip of a reader’s hands on a book while they hold their breath for hours. But, be it an hour, a month, a lifetime, a thousand lifetimes . . . In the end we’re all little kids pacing around impatiently and begging for fulfillment NOW, and, in a weird way, maybe the high-wire suspense element would be easier to maintain and deliver if we remembered the weight of hundreds of years of pleading God for now and the vibrant yearning of a child ready for Christmas.

A long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away…

Hold on, I’m getting ahead of myself.

This is the first week of Advent, the season when Christians traditionally meditate on the events leading up to the birth of Christ and look forward to His return. It’s our Festival of Lights–the story of how God pierced the darkness of our world and illuminated it with His glory.

This is a powerful story, arguably the most powerful story ever, so it’s no wonder we see it echoed over and over again in human legend and popular culture, including…you guessed it…speculative fiction. Frequently, it takes the form of a “messiah story,” in which a character is born in obscurity, either in a supernatural manner or gifted with supernatural powers, and rises to free his or her benighted, oppressed people.

Of course, it’s an imperfect image, but rather than fuss about how these secular stories don’t get the real Messiah Story right, or whether they’re obscuring truth or confusing people about it, I think it’s important to recognize this phenomenon as evidence that God is working in the hearts of mankind, that we’re drawn so strongly to the story of Christmas because it promises to satisfy a longing in our inmost being that we can’t fully articulate. We know we’re in darkness, and we reach toward the light, even if we can’t yet comprehend it.

Even an imperfect story can help begin a conversation about the Real Story.

A New Hope

The first week of Advent is all about hope. We light the candle of Prophecy and read scripture that foretells the coming of Jesus. Similarly, spec-fic stories that center on a messiah usually send them into a society desperately in need of hope, with people clinging to ancient prophecies of a leader who will beat back the darkness and lead them into a golden age.

The Chosen One

"Stupid shadow."

In Episode 1 of the Star Wars saga, Anakin Skywalker is born into slavery on a desert planet under miraculous circumstances–a science-fiction version of the Virgin Birth. Jedi prophets have long foretold the coming of the Chosen One, who will restore balance to a badly discombobulated Force, bringing peace and justice to a galaxy marred by destructive evil. Anakin eventually fulfills that promise, but not in the way anyone expects, and only after a long, tortured descent into darkness.

The Shortening of the Way

"I'm the...what?"

In Dune, Frank Herbert’s epic saga of destiny and power politics in a far-future human society (and do read the book–David Lynch’s art-deco acid trip of a movie doesn’t begin to convey the depth and complexity of this tale, as pretty as it looks), we find people trying to create their own messiah. The Bene Gesserit, a shadowy all-female cabal, works to produce a super-being via selective breeding, someone who will be able to see into the future and permanently unite the warring factions of humanity–under their control, of course.  The program comes with its own set of cunningly-crafted prophecies seeded throughout every human community, intended to pave the way for his arrival. However, the best-laid plans of mice, men, and sororities often go astray, and the messiah is born at an unforeseen place and time, throwing the entire plot askew. As it turns out, this is a good thing.

The Once and Future King

"We are all Britons, and I am your king!"

Fantasy has its own messiah figures, most notably King Arthur, who, through a combination of destiny, magic, and heroic vision, unites the bickering tribes of Britain and establishes Camelot–a realm of justice, chivalry, and courtly grace. Unfortunately, Arthur has very human flaws, which lead inexorably to his undoing, though his body is magically preserved and hidden in anticipation of a future resurrection when he will once again ascend to the throne and restore the glories of Camelot.

Yeah, I'd follow him.

Tolkien’s Ring trilogy gives us Aragorn, heir to the throne of Gondor, who spends his early life hiding from his heritage, his father’s broken sword strapped to his hip, bearing an obscure prophecy that it will be reforged and restored. With the unlikely help of a handful of little, insignificant hobbits, Aragorn vanquishes the armies of evil arrayed against him and reclaims his birthright.

There are many more examples, which I’m sure our readers will provide. What do these stories have in common? Here are three themes I think are significant in light of the Advent season:

1. People need a Savior. All these stories depict a society in deep trouble, full of evil, injustice, and misery, and it’s incapable of fixing itself. It needs help beyond simple human agency, and that help is someone, not something.

2. The Savior’s coming is promised, and that promise is fulfilled. Human beings are living in suffering and despair, but they’re not left without hope. Larger forces are at work to right what’s gone wrong, and the promised deliverer arrives, at just the right place and time.

3. The Savior’s arrival is unexpected. The characters in the story might not recognize this as God’s work, but I think a Christian observer will note as significant the fact that the messiah never appears in the manner anyone expects, nor is the messiah recognized as such. The deliverer emerges from obscurity, seemingly out of nowhere, when nobody’s looking for them. In the Dune example, even though the Bene Gesserit have engineered their messiah down to the prophecies that predict his coming, they are confounded by the arrival of a different, better messiah who is born when one of their members deviates from the plan for the sake of love.

Better to light a single candle than to sit and curse the darkness.

I’ll continue with Episode II next week. In the meantime, find a couple of spec-fic-loving friends in need of the true Messiah and ask them why all their favorite stories are beginning to look a lot like Christmas.

Last time, in looking at J. R. R. Tolkien’s essay “On Fairy-Stories,” I introduced the idea that fairy stories are not primarily for children. The Master of Fantasy suggested that the appeal of fantasy was innate and actually grew stronger as one aged. My focus in Part 2 centered on that idea of “innate-ness,” but this week I’d like to look a little more deeply at the idea that fairy tales are not primarily for children.

Contrasting his own experiences and beliefs about fairy stories with that of Andrew Lang, the author of “the twelve books of the twelve colors,” Tolkien concludes

it will be plain that in my opinion fairy-stories should not be specially associated with children. They are associated with them: naturally, because children are human and fairy-stories are a natural human taste (though not necessarily a universal one) … unnaturally, because of erroneous sentiment about children

This “sentiment about children,” he believed, led to some delightful stories, but also to some attempts at sanitizing fiction for children that were less than desirable:

It has also produced a dreadful undergrowth of stories written or adapted to what was or is conceived to be the measure of children’s minds and needs. The old stories are mollified or bowdlerized, instead of being reserved; the imitations are often merely silly … or patronizing; or (deadliest of all) covertly sniggering, with an eye on the other grown-ups present. I will not accuse Andrew Lang of sniggering, but certainly he smiled to himself, and certainly too often he had an eye on the faces of other clever people over the heads of his child-audience…

I couldn’t help but think of the Shrek movies which certainly do allow adults to snigger over the heads of the child-audience. But in what way can fairytales be adult stories, if not for “insider” lines that allow adults to take away more meaning from the story than do children with less experience or understanding?

Tolkien, in fact, believed adults will and should take away more but that stories should not reshape Truth. He gave one particular instance of a story in which a character died in what author Andrew Lang called a “fair fight,” apparently the only means he felt to be justified for children to experience death since he hated cruelty. Tolkien responded,

Yet it is not clear that “fair fight” is less cruel than “fair judgement”; or that piercing a dwarf with a sword is more just than the execution of wicked kings and evil stepmothers — which Lang abjures: he sends the criminals (as he boasts) to retirement on ample pensions. That is mercy untempered by justice.

In many ways Tolkien separated himself from Christian parents today because he stated bluntly that children aren’t to be protected from reality though they can and should retain the guileless wonder of childhood:

Children are meant to grow up, and not to become Peter Pans. Not to lose innocence and wonder, but to proceed on the appointed journey: that journey upon which it is certainly not better to travel hopefully than to arrive, though we must travel hopefully if we are to arrive. But it is one of the lessons of fairy-stories (if we can speak of the lessons of things that do not lecture) that on callow, lumpish, and selfish youth peril, sorrow, and the shadow of death can bestow dignity, and even sometimes wisdom.

Contrast this to what author Brock Eastman (Taken, P&R Publishing) said about his work:

death is portrayed so lightly these days on television and in other media, so I set out to write a book where no one would die, or if someone did, it would not be taken lightly. As a Christian, I recognize that death should not be glossed over (quoted in “Fantasy Friday – Introducing Brock D. Eastman”)

Tolkien’s thinking was that there should not be two classes of people — adults and children — with each having “their” kind of literature. But the natural question that followed was, What value do fairy stories have for adults? To which he answered

First of all: if written with art, the prime value of fairy-stories will simply be that value which, as literature, they share with other literary forms. But fairy-stories offer also, in a peculiar degree or mode, these things: Fantasy, Recovery, Escape, Consolation, all things of which children have, as a rule, less need than older people.

A little over a year ago, author and blogger Mike Duran decried the fact that so much of Christian speculative fiction is written for young adults. He concluded his post “Why is Christian Spec-fic Mostly YA?” with this:

It’s bad enough that speculative fiction is under-represented in Christian bookstores. What’s worse is that the stuff that IS there, is mostly for kids.

It seems to me Mike is saying today’s Christian speculative fiction, aimed mostly at youth, does what Tolkien saw in Lang’s work. This leads me to ask, Shouldn’t Christians write stories that are truthful and exciting for readers across generational boundaries? Why shouldn’t adults enjoy stories about the Pevensie children or about a fifty-year-old hobbit? Why must we buy into the “their stories, our stories” divide? Is it inevitable in the current publishing climate that stories with youthful protagonists will automatically be categorized as for youth?

Consider what D. Barkley Briggs, author of the Legend of Karac Tor (AMG Publishing), recently said in his interview at Novel Rocket with Sally Apokedak:

I challenge the notion that I’ve written YA fiction. These may be useful marketing terms, but I think they’re sometimes a bit arbitrary and unhelpful, not to mention inaccurate, since I probably have as many adults who enjoy my series as teens. I don’t like the idea of “dumbing down” for the youth market. I simply have young protagonists. It’s fantasy fiction, period…packaged as YA.

How about you? Do you think there should be adult fantasy and children’s fantasy because adults want a little more “bite” than stories with “lots of dragons, elves, and swordsmiths” can give?

Nietzsche once declared that God is dead. Later he added that Man ought to be. “Man,” he wrote, “is something that is to be surpassed. … What is the ape to man? A laughing-stock, a thing of shame. And just the same shall man be to the Superman: a laughing-stock, a thing of shame. … Man is a rope stretched between the animal and the Superman—a rope over an abyss” (from “Zarathustra and the Overman”).

Some would think this epitaph premature. Others would like to chisel the date of death beneath it. They call themselves transhumanists, and they are looking forward to a post-human world.
Max More, one of the pioneers of transhumanism, asserted, “Humanity is a temporary stage along the evolutionary pathway. We are not the zenith of nature’s development. It is time for us to consciously take charge of ourselves and to accelerate our progress. No more gods, no more faith, no more timid holding back. Let us blast out of our old forms, our ignorance, our weakness, and our mortality. The future is ours.”

The road to this future lies through nanotechnology, meets cybborg technology, and ends in a post-human utopia. The dream of transhumanists is to reinvent humanity with nanotech and cybernetics. As Katherine Hayles summed it up, “In the posthuman, there are no essential differences, or absolute demarcations, between bodily existence and computer simulation, cybernetic mechanism and biological organism, robot technology and human goals.”

At this point, it’s a crazy theoretical. And all crazy theoreticals are the happy playground of speculative fiction.

* * *

Science fiction has sometimes been viewed as atheistic and humanist, fantasy as sorcerous and pagan. The stereotypes are not wholly groundless. The space-future, as drawn for us, is often blank with irreligion. The magic realms of fantasy are always entangled with spirituality — sometime the light, sometimes the dark. We wander far in speculative fiction, but never too far from our existential dilemmas. Sometimes we move closer to them.

Take, for example, the ambitions of transhumanism. That’s rich fare for SF readers and writers. Many good books and movies could be spent mining the possibilities of that. And inevitably we would have to borrow the question from the theologians, dust it off from the philosophers’ shelf: Is there such a thing as the human soul?

The transhuman dream lives or dies on that. If we’re all biology, then we are, to borrow a phrase, up for revision. If we have souls — if we are souls — then there is something in us no technology could ever touch.

Beyond the issue of whether we have the power to recreate humanity, is the issue of whether we have the right. If we were brought this far by blind evolution, there’s something to be said for a little guided evolution. Why not make a calculated evolutionary leap?

But if God lives, the enterprise takes on a darker nature. It thrums with the blasphemy of Philip Ivywood: “The world was made badly, and I will make it over again.”

“Woe,” the prophet said, “to him who quarrels with his Maker.” It’s unwise, and more than a little dangerous, to criticize your Creator’s work. How much more unwise, and how much more dangerous, is it to try and do His work over again?

And so the brave new world of nanotech and transhumanism leaves us standing with our oldest ancestors, asking the oldest questions: Who is God, and who are we?

I have always been fascinated by the intersection of religion and speculative fiction. I enjoy exploring the new ideas through the old ones, and the old ideas through the new ones. It’s an interesting exercise to fit strange, imagined realities with the Ultimate Reality.

I am sure some would say that dogma runs against imagination. I would say that of such clashes stories are made. Think again of transhumanism — a wild piece of imagination in its own right. The transhumanist sees nanotech leading to utopia. Secularists who would not go that far can still see a Great Society without poverty or disease or environmental damage. But Christians see a dangerous path, riddled with pitfalls, with the doctrine of Original Sin dictating that whatever can be used for good, humanity will use for evil. We can debate which of these visions is the most rational. There’s little debate which has the most story potential.

The Christian view of a nanotech revolution is tight with tension — the tension between the potential for doing good and the potential for causing harm, the tension between breaking nature’s bounds and abiding by God’s, the tension between creature and Creator. There is the tension of embracing the promise of nanotech while dodging the danger. And tension, as any good writer will tell you, is the heart of story.

The first glory of speculative fiction is to imagine things that do not exist. The second is to ponder things that do. The endless possibilities are captivating — Elves and aliens, distant planets and hidden realms, the power of unbounded technology and the inscrutable laws of faerieland. At the center of these foreign things is everything human and divine. Right and wrong, courage and fear, sin and faith, God Himself — in our most far-flung tales they are right at hand.

Speculative fiction has a way of elucidating spiritual ideas, showing the ends of beliefs. Often the ideas elucidated in SF were grown in the philosophy of Nietzsche and Darwin. No doubt that has worked to spur Christian leeriness of sci-fi and fantasy.

Yet we should be at home in the crossroads of imagination and truth, because our God is the God of both. Seeking His creativity, holding on to His Reality, we can tell great stories — and even greater truths.

– – – – –

Shannon McDermott is the author of The Last Heir, as well as the Christian Holmes series. She also works as an editor and researcher for SALT Magazine. You can read more of her articles at her blog.

Call me unspiritual. But if I tried, I might find a way to start this column in a dull way, especially if you’re (here comes the clichéd gluttony joke) hung over from turkey.

How? By quoting a Bible paragraph or verse, instead of saying something “new.”

This principle might also prove true — especially apart from God’s grace — if you had an hour of reading time before bed, and two books on a table. One is a speculative novel, new and shiny, with a fun cover, fascinating back-cover text, and crisp white pages. The other book is the Bible. The challenge: which would you be inclined to pick up first?

If you’re like me, you’d think to reach for the novel.

Already caught a Devotion this morning. Already know whatever I would read in the Bible. Most of us will shut down such thoughts. But even to have them at all is embarrassing!

I don’t say this to give blame, or an I’ve-beat-this-and-you-can-too sentiment, or put-on humility meant to drag us all down (ohhh, I’m such a sinner and so are you!). Rather, I’m admitting a struggle common to Christians. And this should, I hope, encourage us — for apart from Christ, we wouldn’t even struggle with reading His Word!

Yes, “Bible fog” seems to be a phenomenon unique to Christians. It’s also encouraging because this struggle could be secondary evidence that this Book, apart from any other, is the very Word of God. Why else would our flesh, and/or the Devil, resist it so much?

Nonfiction books, biographies, documentaries, and (true!) sermon tropes reference the countless ways in which the flesh and the Devil have tried to extinguish God’s Word. Usually they ignore it. When that doesn’t work, they make mockery (witness the recent attempts by some to shut up a certain public-God-praising football player). Lest that prove their laughable level of discomfort, they revert to ignoring, or else more-subtle modes of intolerance of the Bible: prosecuting public Biblical references, or sometimes (as in before the Reformation) keeping it from being translated into common languages.

Some folks, of course, ban or burn the Bible. Given the level of hatred toward this book far beyond Christians’ struggles to dig deep into it, it’s really quite amazing that we have so many copies of original texts — more than copies of, say, Homer’s works, I’ve read.

It also seems amazing that we need fight to maintain our fascination with God’s Story.

Even more amazing could be to doubt that the Word, after surviving hundreds of years of hatred and persecution and ignorance on our old Earth, would not last into the New.

The everlasting Story

In this series, I’ve tried to lay a Scriptural foundation for why various things, done for God’s glory, may last into the After-world — the physical, sin-purged, made-new New Heavens and New Earth. Much of this is founded on promises God has made, such as to preserve Israel’s homeland, and to bring Heaven to this Earth-made-new (and not to annihilate Earth to replace with a completely new creation; see last week’s column).

Other parts of this discussion are speculation. And that will likely include next week’s exploration of why manmade stories, of today, could last into the eternal world.

Yet the truth of Scripture’s eternality should, I think, be beyond doubt or questioning.

Forever, O LORD, your word
is firmly fixed in the heavens.

Your faithfulness endures to all generations;
you have established the earth, and it stands fast.

Psalm 119:89-90

A voice says, “Cry!”
And I said, “What shall I cry?”

All flesh is grass,
and all its beauty is like the flower of the field.

The grass withers, the flower fades
when the breath of the LORD blows on it;
surely the people are grass.

The grass withers, the flower fades,
but the word of our God will stand forever.

Isaiah 40: 6-8

[Jesus speaking] “Heaven and earth will pass away, but my words will not pass away.”

Matthew 24:35

That alone would establish the case: God’s Word will last beyond this old Earth. If kings, despots, heretics, and other villains couldn’t purge the planet of His Word, then His own exposing and refining fire (2 Peter 3:10) cannot include wiping out His own Word.

Secondary support for the Bible’s everlasting existence comes from the Book’s own direct prophecies about the New Earth. As discussed last week, the New Earth will come after the present-day afterlife. Even Heaven will be made new along with “the creation itself” that had been groaning with “we ourselves” (Romans 8), when at long last “the dwelling of God is with man” (Rev. 21:3)! The New Earth will be a physical world, with physical people in physical resurrected bodies (2 Cor. 5). We will recall our former lives (Rev. 6: 9-11 — martyrs even knew they had been murdered and longed for God’s justice). We’ll see Christ clearly, a far better perspective of reality, not as “in a mirror dimly, but then face to face … fully, even as I have been fully known” (1 Cor. 13:12).

Physical resurrected beings in a physical resurrected world, with memories of our past lives along with far greater perspective as we see Christ face to face. … How could we not also want His perfect written revelation through which we first came to know Him?

“I’ve always thought that we wouldn’t need the Bible anymore in eternity, that the faith being made sight would remove all need for it,” reader Paul Lee said last week. “But the idea of reading the Scripture in eternity is intriguing in a way… the use of the text would have changed. It would be a record, a testament, to the salvation of God in the past.”

Amen. And the word testament is a giveaway, I think, to the fact that we already know a little about what that would be like! We have the Old Testament, a book of incredible mysteries for previous readers, and still many mysteries today — but less than before.

• Where once readers heard Isaiah’s and others prophets’ words about a Savior, who was both a conquering King and a suffering servant, and confused the two comings — with Christ’s arrival, we know a little bit more about the difference.
• Where once we might wonder why God created an institution like marriage, Paul claims that all along it had been patterned on Christ and His Church (Eph. 5:32).
• Once no one knew the amazing Story God had waiting. Now He has shown it:

But, as it is written,

“What no eye has seen, nor ear heard,
nor the heart of man imagined,
what God has prepared for those who love him”—

these things God has revealed to us through the Spirit. For the Spirit searches everything, even the depths of God.

1 Corinthians 2:9-10

If even on this old Earth, without resurrected minds and with less perspective, we can glory in the mysteries of the Old Testament that God has shown to us, imagine the even greater wonder of looking back on both Testaments as the epic record of God’s Story.

Worship in the Word

Knowing all this about the coming After-world, anticipating it, studying it, trying to balance between taking God’s promises at face value and not speculating beyond that — all this forges even greater faith in the truth, and the wonder, of God’s everlasting Story.

Especially on this day of thankfulness to the God of truth and beauty, I almost want to break out — like the apostle Paul right in the middle of deep theologizing (Rom 11: 33-36) — in praise and worship. This would attend our wonder at how Scripture will seem to us on the New Earth. It may also increase our awe at His incredible Word, awe that echoes backward from that made-new world of clarity and wonder — back in time, and into our old-and-groaning world of dim murkiness, boredom, and “Bible fog.”

It seems cliché to say “the Bible is not just a textbook, it’s a story.” That “rebuttal,” to something few claim to believe, itself needs some rebutting. Scripture does give us facts, theology, history, law. And some Bible-is-really-a-story folks may actually tell the wrong story. Yet how often do the heresies and false teachings and our own sin-struggles make us use the Book, maybe not like a “textbook,” but like a personal-repair manual?

Conversely, how many times do we go through this angsty little dance: I don’t want to read it because I don’t feeling like I want to, and I know I should, and I really should feel in advance that this is God’s perfect Word and He has something to say to me through it, so I ought to be grateful and overflowing with thanks, just like in church — so why don’t I?

Just now I realized what else that sounds like: writers’ block. Writers among my readers may identify. Yes, sometimes you need to leave the desk and eat, get some sleep or some coffee, and come back for another try. And sometimes you need to write anyway. Belay the distractions and other don’t-want-to excuses. Belay the don’t-feel-like-its. Yes, you do feel like it. Deep down you do. Otherwise you wouldn’t hate the struggle.

With Scripture, the solutions might be similar. But there may be one added factor that doesn’t get discussed often: that perhaps we over-complicate reading Scripture.

Make no mistake. There’s definitely a time for word studies, journaling, and going deep.

Yet there’s also a time just to read the Story. To pray that God’s Spirit will remove the mental fog and make what’s on the pages come alive. Read it all the way through, and pick up on details later, after we’re reviewing, and living, the Story of stories.

It also helps if you can time-travel into "Bible times" ...

Something I’ve been doing recently is reading aloud. Acting it out. This imagination is good for something! My wife and I have been reading Ezekiel. And hearing God’s words, repetitions, warnings, and scary wrath, not just silently but out loud — the emotions arrive naturally. On Tuesday night I was almost shivering as I finished Ezekiel 5-6.

Very strange how pretending can sometimes make reality seem even more real.

Yet my guess is that on the New Earth, acting it out won’t even be necessary. What would it be like to read the Word itself with the Word Himself (John 1:1)? What would the risen and reigning Christ sound like during, say, a public reading? What translation would He use? (Ooooh!) Which truths would He clarify? Which might He save for later?

These are only a few of many thoughts and wonderings. I wish I had time for even more about the Story we’ll enjoy forever, and for which I wish to be thankful today.

Next: other stories. How does God’s everlasting Story hint those may also last?

Yes, I am lousy at photo editing.

Two weeks ago, I stirred up a little bit of debate by asking all of you, our humble readers, what you thought about aliens. Is it possible that God has created life on some alien world? Possibly even sentient alien life? You guys impressed me, putting together some very cogent arguments, some of which I agreed with, some which I didn’t. But one of the commenters named Andy summed up the dilemma like this:

If they do exist, will they have souls and be capable of sin?

If so, does Jesus’ death and resurrection cover them?

Or, do they need Jesus to come for them as well?

The other comments covered the subject pretty thoroughly, so much so that I hesitate to post my thoughts, partially because some of you said it better than I could, and also because I’m scared of getting trounced. But then, I’ve never been one to back down from a bad idea. Just ask my wife.

That being said, before we can tackle Andy’s excellent questions, I think we have to answer a bigger one: does the Bible allow for the existence of alien life, sentient or non-? As many of your rightly pointed out, the Bible is silent on this subject. There is no mention of aliens within the Bible (unless you take a very liberal and loose view of the events of Ezekiel 1, which I don’t). In some ways, we may be tempted to modify the old Sunday School song a little:

There’s no aliens, this I know,

‘Cuz the Bible doesn’t say so.

But here’s the thing: I don’t think that’s a valid argument. Yes, there is no mention of aliens in any of the creation accounts, but that doesn’t mean that God couldn’t have made them.

Let me show you what I mean. Grab your Bible and turn to Genesis 1. Go ahead, I’ll wait. Now, answer me these two questions:

1) On what day did God create microscopic lifeforms?

2) On what day did God create the angels?

Two weeks ago, some of you brought up the question of angels and I thank you for it. We know that angelic beings exist, and yet nowhere in the Bible do we get a clear reference to when or how these beings were created. I’m not so sure I buy the whole “spirits of alien beings” that someone suggested, but for all I know, that could be it. It seems from later passages (Job 38:7) that the angels were present during the creative process, but other than that, the Bible is largely silent about their genesis. But angelology is not my forte and is beyond the scope of this series, so we’ll set that aside for now.

But what about those germs and viruses and everything else that you need a microscope to see. When did God create them? The Bible is silent on that subject. As a matter of fact, they’re never brought up at all. And yet we know that they exist. We know that God must have created them, since God created everything, even if they’re not mentioned in the Bible. I think a similar case can be made for the possibility of alien life. Just because the Bible doesn’t say anything about them doesn’t mean that God couldn’t have created them. The silence of Scripture just tells us that God didn’t feel it necessary to share that information with the ancient Israelites, the original readers of Genesis.

Now one might be tempted to argue that the existence of alien life is more theologically important than the existence of microscopic organisms. As Andy pointed out, if we do encounter intelligent alien life, we’ll be faced with the question of their souls and their status before God. It would have been nice if God had given us some guidance on that subject. But let’s face it, this isn’t the only time that we’ve been left with no direct guidance on a sticky theological problem.

Take cloning, for example. Are clones people? Do they have souls? The Bible doesn’t say one word about cloning, and yet, as science marches toward a future where the cloning of humans could become commonplace, those are questions we’ll need to answer. We’ll have to consult the whole of Scripture to try to discern what the will of God is, what is good and acceptable and perfect. I would suggest we’re facing a similar dilemma when it comes to aliens.

Now, as some of you have pointed out, the universe could be devoid of sentient, intelligent life (except for us, naturally, although there are days when I wonder if the exclusion is warranted). It could very well be that God needed a lot of space to get things “just right” for Earth and her inhabitants. If that’s the case, I won’t lose any sleep over it. But isn’t it a lot more fun to wonder and wander and speculate?

Next time, we’ll talk about that pesky question of if aliens would have souls. Until then, let me have it. I’ll break out my asbestos undies.

” I got a candy bar.”

“I got a popcorn ball.”

“I got an apple.”

“What about you, Charlie Brown? What did you get?”

“I got a rock.”

I’m going to keep this simple today. What makes a bestseller? Why does one writer catch lightning in a bottle while another of comparable (or even superior) skill and talent can’t give their book away? What makes you want to pick up a book, keep reading it, and then recommend it to your friends after you’ve finished it?

Here’s some additional food for thought: Take a look at the current Amazon best sellers list, overall and for science fiction/fantasy specifically. Can you identify any common characteristics among the top ten books? Why do you think people are choosing to buy these particular books?

Okay, have at it.

Fairy stories are for children.

Or are they?

J. R. R. Tolkien in his essay “On Fairy Stories” built an argument that challenged the usual assumptions.

First, he believed that fairy stories had significance beyond entertainment.

But when we have done all that research — collection and comparison of the tales of many lands — can do; when we have explained many of the elements commonly found embedded in fairy-stories (such as step-mothers, enchanted bears and bulls, cannibal witches, taboos on names, and the like) as relics of ancient customs once practised in daily life, or of beliefs once held as beliefs and not as “fancies” — there remains still a point too often forgotten: that is the effect produced now by these old things in the stories as they are. (pp. 10-11 – emphasis mine)

Whether invented or re-created, every new particle added to a story, nevertheless, retained elements that the teller (or writer) wanted to communicate.

The things that are there must often have been retained (or inserted) because the oral narrators, instinctively or consciously, felt their literary “significance.” Even where a prohibition in a fairy-story is guessed to be derived from some taboo once practised long ago, it has probably been preserved in the later stages of the tale’s history because of the great mythical significance of prohibition. A sense of that significance may indeed have lain behind some of the taboos themselves. Thou shalt not — or else thou shall depart beggared into endless regret. (p.11)

In that regard, fairy stories accomplish something grand:

Such stories have now a mythical or total (unanalysable) effect . . . they open a door on Other Time, and if we pass through, though only for a moment, we stand outside our own time, outside Time itself, maybe.

Because of this idea, that stories passed down from generation to generation communicated things of importance and take readers to places beyond themselves, Tolkien did not believe Faerie was the exclusive realm of children. In fact he felt adults were more suited to it and grew to understand fairy stories more as they aged.

Children as a class — except in a common lack of experience they are not one — neither like fairy-stories more, nor understand them better than adults do; and no more than they like many other things. . . But in fact only some children, and some adults, have any special taste for them; and when they have it, it is not exclusive, nor even necessarily dominant. It is a taste, too, that would not appear, I think, very early in childhood without artificial stimulus; it is certainly one that does not decrease but increases with age, if it is innate.
(pp. 11-12)

So I wonder, is Tolkien right that only some individuals “have a special taste” for fairy tales? Is it true that only some individuals have a desire for “Faerie,” that world of wonder and magic where the incredible is normal?

I’ve long thought that there is something in the human heart that desires heaven, or perhaps, more accurately, desires God. He is the one who makes possible the heart’s dearest longings. In fact He is the satisfaction of that poignant joy that strikes the heart at the sight of a rainbow or a mountain meadow or an autumn forest. Those beauties hint at a greater beauty and stir a longing to live within that beauty, to capture it and hold it, to retain that moment of desire fulfilled.

Equally so, I’ve come to believe that Faerie, as Tolkien believed, is the man-made world that mirrors the beauty and wonder of God, however imperfectly.

An essential power of Faerie is thus the power of making immediately effective by the will the visions of “fantasy.” Not all are beautiful or even wholesome, not at any rate the fantasies of fallen Man. And he has stained the elves who have this power (in verity or fable) with his own stain. (p. 8 – emphasis mine)

My question then is, why would a person hungry for God not be drawn to the world of Faerie? I suppose I’m asking the wrong audience because my guess is most people who visit Spec Faith are indeed drawn to Faerie. But I know a few people who definitely have no desire to live in the land of magic. They read biographies and histories and see no value in “make believe.” Yet they revel in the wonder of God.

Where, then, is the disconnect? Is Tolkien right — the love of Faerie is innate? And am I wrong that the love of Faerie is the same love and longing we have for God?