G. K. Chesterton

Modern literature takes insanity as its centre. Therefore, it loses the interest even of insanity. A lunatic is not startling to himself, because he is quite serious; that is what makes him a lunatic. A man who thinks he is a piece of glass is to himself as dull as a piece of glass. A man who thinks he is a chicken is to himself as common as a chicken. It is only sanity that can see even a wild poetry in insanity. Therefore, these wise old tales made the hero ordinary and the tale extraordinary. But you have made the hero extraordinary and the tale ordinary — so ordinary — oh, so very ordinary. (from Tremendous Trifles)

Only in fairy tales did hope ascend.

For the devils, alas, we have always believed in. The hopeful element in the universe has in modern times continually been denied and reasserted; but the hopeless element has never for a moment been denied…. The greatest of purely modern poets summed up the really modern attitude in that fine Agnostic line—

“There may be Heaven; there must be Hell.”

The gloomy view of the universe has been a continuous tradition; and the new types of spiritual investigation or conjecture all begin by being gloomy. A little while ago men believed in no spirits. Now they are beginning rather slowly to believe in rather slow spirits. (from Tremendous Trifles)

I find Chesterton’s perception of “modern fiction” — stories written in a realistic style nearly a hundred years ago — eerily similar to stories written in a realistic style today. When the imagination is separated from spiritual reality, it seems to stall on the bleak and the horrible.

It fits with what we know. Life is … not as exciting as we wish. And the consequences of our actions and choices are more dire than we expected. Then waiting at the end is … the end.

How different for the person who sees spiritual realities as more real than physical realities. The here and now is the prelude, not the main act, and most definitely not the final act.

What happens here is better because with it comes Promise. And Hope.

The one point I disagree with Chesterton on when it comes to story is his view of the protagonist of a fairy tale:

Realism means that the world is dull and full of routine, but that the soul is sick and screaming. The problem of the fairy tale is — what will a healthy man do with a fantastic world? The problem of the modern novel is — what will a madman do with a dull world? In the fairy tales the cosmos goes mad; but the hero does not go mad. In the modern novels the hero is mad before the book begins, and suffers from the harsh steadiness and cruel sanity of the cosmos. (from Tremendous Trifles)

the world has also gone mad

So the problem a fantasy deals with is — what does a soul sick and screaming do in a world gone mad? Certainly painting it in those terms, such a story does not appear to traffic in hope.

But I suggest the solution to the problem offers the truest hope — such a soul can do noting to right the world. He must trust in someone greater than himself.

The idea that the soul is healthy, I think, is perhaps the cruelest of concepts, one that leaves the reader, knowing himself to be less than whole, wanting.

As I see it, then, there are two kinds of stories that lead to hopelessness — ones that are realistic about the physical world but not the spiritual, and ones that falsely infuse hope in a healthy soul.

How do you see it?

A popular pastor and author, Randy Alcorn has given Christians many works of nonfiction on topics ranging from life issues, birth control, stewardship, and especially living in light of eternity. Yet he has also penned bestselling  fiction like Dominion, Deadline, and the award-winning Safely Home. Now in this second of a two-part series (read part 1), Alcorn shares his thoughts on the power of story, Christians’ responses to speculative genres, writing Courageous for the new film, and the prophesied New Heavens and New Earth.

How did you write the novelization for the film Courageous?

Last year I said yes to writing a novel based on the screenplay of the new movie Courageous (www.courageousthemovie.com), which is being released in theaters on September 30. The movie was done by the Kendrick brothers, Stephen and Alex, who produced Facing the Giants and Fireproof. As Fireproof centered on fire fighters and marriage, Courageous centers on police officers and fatherhood and, not surprisingly, COURAGE for men in their homes and personal lives.

Some movie screenplays are based on novels, others are written directly for the movie. In those cases, a novelist, such as myself, is called in to do a “novelization” of the screenplay. The fun thing about this project for me was that the excellent spine of the novel Courageous already existed in the screenplay, but the novel is about five times longer, meaning that I had to invent 80% of the story line. This was an imaginative process for me, because I introduced new characters and locations and many scenes that are not in the movie.

Many who watch the movie Courageous will want to learn more about the story than is in its two hours on screen.  The novel is the equivalent of ten hours of screen time, and allows much more exploration of the characters, back-story and subplots as well as new dramatic scenes (without having to spend millions of dollars to produce them). When I tell people I wrote a novel based on the movie, they are excited and ask all kinds of questions. They love the idea of seeing the movie, then exploring it in the novel form, in characters and storyline and themes in greater detail at their leisure.

Movie-making and book-writing are not contradictory, but supplementary mediums. Watching Alex and Stephen sit at their computers surrounded by big screens, editing Courageous, showed me that making a good movie is remarkably similar to making a good book, which I’ve been trying to do for twenty-five years. The painstaking editing process helps you to make it into the most compelling story that reaches into the audience’s hearts.

What makes a story unforgettable and haunting is the same thing in movies as it is in books. We crave a story that has the ring of truth, and involves action and conflict and the growth of characters we care about. We want a story that we don’t leave behind when we leave the theatre or read the last page of the book. We want a redemptive story that stays with us and changes us for the better. That’s what I’m convinced the movie Courageous will do. My prayer is that the novel Courageous will do the same.

How does anticipating the New Earth change our lives?

Without an eternal perspective, without understanding the reality that the best is yet to come, we assume that people who die young, who are handicapped, who aren’t healthy, who don’t get married, or who don’t _____ [fill in the blank] will inevitably miss out on the best life has to offer. But the theology underlying those assumptions is fatally flawed. We’re presuming that our present Earth, bodies, culture, relationships, and lives are superior to those of the New Earth. What are we thinking?

I believe the New Earth will offer us opportunities we wished for but never had. God’s original plan was that human beings would live happy and fulfilling lives on Earth. If our current lives are our only chances at that, God’s plan has been thwarted. Consider the injustice—many honest, faithful people never got to live fulfilling lives, while some dishonest and unfaithful people seemed to fare much better.

But God is not unjust, and this is not our only chance at life on Earth. The doctrine of the New Earth clearly demonstrates that.

In Luke 6:20-23, Jesus says, “Blessed are you who are poor, for yours is the kingdom of God. Blessed are you who hunger now, for you will be satisfied. Blessed are you who weep now, for you will laugh. Blessed are you when men hate you, when they exclude you and insult you and reject your name as evil, because of the Son of Man. Rejoice in that day and leap for joy, because great is your reward in heaven.”

Jesus tells the hungry they’ll be satisfied. Those whose eyes are swollen with tears will laugh. Those persecuted should leap for joy now. Why? Because of their great reward in Heaven later.

Where will Heaven be? In the parallel passage Jesus says, “Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted. Blessed are the meek, for they will inherit the earth” (Matthew 5:3-5). Earth is the setting for God’s ultimate comfort, for his reversal of life’s injustices and tragedies. We will live on what we inherit—the earth. All the blessings Jesus promised will be ours in the place we will live—the New Earth.

God promises to make up for the heartbreaks of this earth.

Are you living with the disappointment of unfulfilled dreams? In Heaven you’ll find their fulfillment! Did poverty, poor health, war, or lack of time prevent you from pursuing an adventure or dream? Did you never get to finish building that boat or painting that picture or writing that book—or reading that pile of books? Good news. On the New Earth you will have a second chance to do what you dreamed of doing—and far more besides.

Living under the Curse means we miss countless opportunities. The reversing of the Curse, and the resurrection of our bodies and our Earth, mean we’ll regain lost opportunities and inherit many more besides.

In this world, even under the Curse, human imagination and skill have produced some remarkable works. The statues of Easter Island. Stonehenge. Shakespeare’s plays. Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony. The Golden Gate Bridge. Baseball. Heart transplants. Prenatal surgery. Microwave ovens. DVDs. The space shuttle. Chocolate ice cream. Pecan pie. Sports cars. It’s a list that never ends.

With the resources God will lavishly give us on the New Earth, what will we be able to accomplish together? When we think about this, we should be like children anticipating Christmas—sneaking out of bed to see what’s under the Christmas tree.

Without creativity, music would be a dull succession of sounds. Without creativity, books would be colorless and superficial. They wouldn’t engage our minds and hearts. Paintings would be lifeless or nonexistent. Our homes would be barracks, our buildings boxes. God’s preparing a place for us, and he’ll equip us to develop it to his glory.

I agree with Anthony Hoekema when he says, “The possibilities that now rise before us boggle the mind. Will there be ‘better Beethovens’ on the new earth? . . . better Rembrandts, better Raphaels? Shall we read better poetry, better drama, and better prose? Will scientists continue to advance in technological achievement, will geologists continue to dig out the treasures of the earth, and will architects continue to build imposing and attractive structures? Will there be exciting new adventures in space travel? . . . Our culture will glorify God in ways that surpass our most fantastic dreams.”

On the New Earth, God’s gifts to us will never be lost to age, death, pettiness, insecurity, or laziness. Undistracted and undiminished by sin and the demands of survival, mankind will create and innovate at unprecedented levels, to God’s eternal glory.

Randy Alcorn is an author and the founder of Eternal Perspective Ministries (EPM), a nonprofit ministry dedicated to teaching principles of God’s Word and assisting the church in ministering to the unreached, unfed, unborn, uneducated, unreconciled, and unsupported people around the world. “My ministry focus is communicating the strategic importance of using our earthly time, money, possessions and opportunities to invest in need-meeting ministries that count for eternity,” Alcorn says. “I do that by trying to analyze, teach and apply the implications of Christian truth.”

Before starting EPM in 1990, Randy served as a pastor for fourteen years. He holds degrees in theology and biblical studies, and has taught on the adjunct faculties of Multnomah University and Western Seminary in Portland, Oregon.

Randy has written more than forty books including the best-sellers Heaven, The Treasure Principle, and the Gold Medallion winner Safely Home.

Alcorn resides in Gresham, Oregon with his wife, Nanci. They have two married daughters and are the proud grandparents of four grandsons. Randy enjoys hanging out with his family, biking, tennis, research, and reading.

You may contact Eternal Perspective Ministries at www.epm.org or 39085 Pioneer Blvd., Suite 206, Sandy, OR 97055 or 503.668.5200. Follow Randy on Facebook, Twitter, and on his blog.

Let’s admit it: after a while, all the complaining by Christian fantasy/sci-fi/other fans can seem a little old. I do much of that complaining myself. If you are reading, you likely do too.

Besides, we keep finding exceptions, do we not? Thus our hearty disclaimer goes like this:

Look at the continued success of C.S. Lewis. And even in the more-popular level, SF authors like Frank Peretti, Ted Dekker, and even the Left Behind series guys have made enormous inroads. Sure, some of the writing may not be that great, but still, this proves there is a market. All we need to do is a) publish more books, b) get behind the greatest authors, c) make the fiction more Edgy and/or less Preachy, d) publish my great novel, of course!

So the genres are actually selling somewhere. Great. No, it really is great. But I still ask: what are people using the product for? If all those books are merely serving as doorstops or to prop up wobbly table legs, it’s all for naught. And no, I don’t think it’s that bad. However:

If Christian SF advocates say: Great, at least some people want these visionary stories …

While maybe most readers instead think according to their Churchian Dragon-ish rules for what stories they will allow or maybe even enjoy: Pfshh, the kids sure like this “fantasy” stuff for some reason, and I can’t let them read Harry Potter, so I am certainly glad there’s a Christian Equivalent that I can toss at them and from which they can Learn Values …

… Is Christian SF really stealing past those Dragons, or tossing them red meat?

Though we should still push for more truthful, more beautiful, and more fantastic novels, maybe we also need to look at how many readers are using these books. But also, what about those exceptions to the Dragons’ rules? How did they seem to steal past the Dragons?

Successful steals(?)

My suggestion — against which I encourage challenge and discussion — is that the Christian SF authors allowed past the Dragons always won trust with readers in “nonfiction” areas.

I’m not saying this is right or wrong. And already I can hear the rightful insistence rise that Christians should want to experience truth and beauty with Story itself as an intrinsically good Thing, not just as a means to some other “practical” end! I hear that protest, I join in, and I give a fist-pump. Yet I contend those Dragons will, with very good intentions, blast fire on anything that doesn’t look useful according to their own “nonfiction”-based expectations. And thus far, these have only allowed authors who seem to address “Practical” Concerns. They may even contradict the author’s expressed intent of why he wrote, such as with …

1. C.S. Lewis

How to keep the kids safe and happy. (Oh, also: cool story, bro.)

Lewis naturally won many Christian readers’ trust with his unabashed yet winsome defense of orthodox faith in Mere Christianity and many other nonfiction works. Yet with his fiction, especially The Chronicles of Narnia, even many Christians who don’t mind the mythological creatures and magic will allow the series — for bad reasons. They may bypass Lewis’s own insistence that he didn’t set out to write only Biblical allegory or only fairy tales for children (though these were among his goals) and thus break into his work and salvage it for more “practical” parts. We need good stories for our kids that aren’t secular. And they must have a Pure Salvation Allegory™, because I assume that’s the only healthy fantasy that exists.

Alas, even Christians who know Biblical hermeneutics violations — that we do not salvage Scripture for our own foreign intents, taking phrases/verses/books out of context and far beyond the Author’s and authors’ original meaning — will throw all those principles right out the window when it comes to fiction. The author’s intent? Does it matter? I’ll use it my way.

2. Frank Peretti

How to defeat your demon. (Oh, also: cool story, bro.)

I caught the end of the 1980s to 1990s craze over this overall-fantastic author’s first novels. But I think we often forget that Peretti did not first break through to publication with his supernatural thriller This Present Darkness in 1986 — he’d already been published, with two adventure stories marketed to kids and teens. As for his two Darkness novels, how much praise do you remember like: Wow, what a fantastic story, not classic literature, but with a great plot and action naturally imbuing Biblical truths? Likely not. Instead most praise seemed like: We must wake up and realize that dark forces are threatening America (and, oh yeah, the Church) and Spiritual Warfare and Evil New-Age Religion are real concerns!

Of course, I’m not saying those are not concerns. But were those the only benefits Peretti’s books could provide — Practical Use, to get people to realize demons are despicable and prayer is powerful, and that we should fight the New Age Movement in our own towns?

3. Tim LaHaye and Jerry B. Jenkins

How to survive the Tribulation and save souls. (Oh, also: cool story, bro.)

On this I speak with more familiarity; I personally took part in Left Behind fandom and have even retained some of it to this day. For me, the series was thrilling. And unlike previous speculative novels, they shook some people, including myself, into considering: We should have more great stories about Christians who struggle within while also engaging their dark world, leading them to wrestle with issues of faith and how to fight evil.

Yet it was very difficult then to enjoy them as mainly exciting novels, with all the other praise coming from Practical Nonfiction-Only Christians who mainly wanted to use the books to prop up their prophecy beliefs: Jesus will come back; the end is near; and it could be very much like this series shows it to be! If you are a Christian, you want to know what will happen in the future, don’t you? And if you are not a Christian, you don’t want to be left behind, do you? (Perhaps the Antichrist is scarier than an eternity without the One Who created and loved you for the goal of enjoying Him forever?) Read the books, and okay, have your fun with the action if you must, but then use them to evangelize or Make a Decision.

Moreover, these practical expectations — and evident self-imposed restrictions not to get too creative — hamstrung the series’ final volumes. The series’ most boring character was Jesus. When He finally arrived, everything was fantastic until He began only ever quoting Himself from the Bible. Sure, it’s risky putting words in His mouth. But surely one can dare to write dialogue for our Savior, basing it on truth, yet trusting readers to discern reality from story?

4. Ted Dekker

How to remember martyrs’ sacrifices. (Oh, also: cool story, bro.)(… ?)

One can’t forget him. Moreover, I would consider Dekker — and several other authors — to be among the most successful contemporary “stealers” past the Churchian Dragons. So far, his novels haven’t met the re-interpreted, salvage-for-parts fates that even Lewis’s works have suffered. Dekker’s YA books only came after his novels for adult readers. And he wrote only one nonfiction book (The Slumber of Christianity, about how many Christians have neglected their pursuit of joy in God, which he also imbues in many of his novels).

Still, how did Dekker get his start? Perhaps readers will share their views on his seeming deviation from the norm. But before that discussion I will suggest this: Dekker was already a missionary kid with pre-existing solid Christian cred. Moreover, he had already been deeply involved with a successful business venture, which many Christians would further respect.

Then Dekker went on to publish Heaven’s Wager, his first novel, with directly Christian messages and — despite the novel’s very dark beginning — themes familiar to evangelicals. His further works explored themes of missionaries and martyrdom — also familiar. He co-wrote two novels with Campus Crusade founder Bill Bright (I know that guy!), which would earn more evangelicals’ attention. And all that to win trust, long before he attained cred with less overtly traditional readers for novels that pushed boundaries and got more “edgy.”

So I’d still put Dekker in the category of someone who stole past the Dragons, thanks to his early emphasis of familiar themes. What he’s done since, though, does seem more unique.

5. Randy Alcorn

How to remember the persecuted church. (Oh, also: cool story, bro.)

I had to mention him again, not just because he was last week’s and will be this week’s guest writer. He writes fiction, most of which rings familiar to Christians — a Screwtape Letters-style book, a novel about missions and martyrdom (Safely Home), and a direct-allegory, Pilgrim’s Progress-style story of Christian living (Edge of Eternity).

Yet with Alcorn’s nonfiction, he also delves deep into hot issues Christians want to study, including Pro-Life Issues to Pro-Choice Arguments, The Treasure Principle (finances and tithing), a smaller e-book on The Pill and contraception ethics in general, Heaven,  and If God is Good (about the problem of evil and human suffering). Result: even his novels more easily steal past watchful Churchian Dragons, while others are kept at bay with blasts of the practically minded Dragons’ fire. Why? Alcorn has won Christian readers’ trust. Not by rants about bad Christian fiction or how we’ve bought into Gnosticism (like that Burnett guy), but by writing about the issues many Christians care about, helping and assuring them, and also gently challenging them through both nonfiction doctrine-teaching, and familiar fiction.

Those are all the names I thought of. Maybe you have more, including possible exceptions to my suggested “rules.” But next week in (the delayed) Stories for Christians 3: Stealing past Churchian Dragons: how can we learn from those authors’ successes? How might writers win Christian readers’ trust, while also gently challenging their assumptions about Story?

If the title Planet Narnia makes you cringe, you’re not alone. And if the title The Narnia Code makes you think “Lewis would have hated this,” well, me too (although upon reflection, I realized it was Tolkien who would have hated it–and he didn’t much care for Narnia anyway).

Added to the list of things I don’t much care for is literary theory that imposes something on a book that I don’t believe the author meant to put there. But Michael Ward, author of Planet Narnia, insists that he is not imposing a theory on the Narnia books. The subject of his thesis is, he claims, a “discovery”–the uncovering of “a genuine secret”: a thematic unity in the Narnia books that Lewis himself constructed and deliberately hid.

Skeptical but willing to give the theory an ear–especially since it was mostly presented by British academics, and I can listen to those accents all day long–I settled in to watch the BBC documentary The Narnia Code with family the other night. And . . . it was fascinating. Quite possibly a genuine discovery.

You can watch the trailer here. It is not as intriguing as the actual documentary. And I am very much looking forward to reading the book, which you can learn more about here. Be prepared for a delightful mesh of literature, medieval cosmology, Christian worldview, and, as Michael Ward puts, a deeper understanding of Lewis’s view of a “meaning-drenched universe.”

We do it so much the word has entered the official lexicon–type a word or phrase (or if you’re paranoid narcissistic prying nosy curious, try your name or a friend’s name) into the Google search engine, and click “Google search.” You’re googling! Wait for a fraction of a second (or minute, depending on the speed of your internet connection), and all manner of strange and wonderful connections to places around the globe will appear. Click one, then another, then another…

Writers have become obsessed with getting their work into the coveted first result to a Google search.  There is a cottage industry of hints, tips, and manuals for making this happen, but it’s often just a matter of having an unusual name or title that nobody else is using. Search on Speculative Faith, or my own blog, Frederation, and you’ll find us both standing proud on that first line. I don’t think either of us employed any special strategy to get there.

In an effort to contribute something useful today, I googled “Christian speculative fiction.” Here are the top ten results:

1. Christian Science Fiction (CSF), which unfortunately did not load for me. Google helpfully offers a link to a cached page from a recent visit to the sites it lists. This reveals “Christian Science Fiction” as the home page for the Christian Science Fiction web ring, and stories by Rick Sutcliffe. 

2. Biblical speculative fiction – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia – Wikipedia article on “Biblical Speculative Fiction.”

3. WhereTheMapEnds, the forum and blog for Christian spec-fic publishing house Marcher Lord Press.

4. The Clive Staples Award for Christian Speculative Fiction, an annual readers’ award for excellence in Christian spec-fic, administered by our own Rebecca Miller.

5.  Amazon.com: Christian Speculative Fiction–An Emerging Genre! – An Amazon list of Christian spec-fic, compiled by a lady from North Miami Beach who uses the handle, “Mir.”

6. Christian Speculative Fiction – a ‘lost’ genre? at The Crafty Writer – An interview with publisher Jeff Gerke of Marcher Lord Press.

7. Novel Rocket: Christian Speculative Fiction Panel — Pt. 1 – Novel Rocket, formerly Novel Journey, is a blog honored by Writer’s Digest as one of the best websites for writers. Here we find a panel discussion of Christian spec-fic featuring Jeff Gerke, Rebecca Miller, and Frank Creed.

8.  Frank Creed – Christian Speculative Fiction – As you might expect, the home page for Christian spec-fic writer Frank Creed.

9. sbniccum.com – Home – A blog. If you scroll down, you’ll find a brief definition of Christian speculative fiction and some suggestions about where to look for it.

10. Christian Speculative Fiction Authors and Writers | FamilyFiction.com – FamilyFiction.com, “Your Christian Fiction Information Source,” offers here a linked list of Christian spec-fic authors, including yours truly. Oddly, it’s indexed in alphabetical order by first name.

The cool collage in the picture above is by the talented C0lette Wibisono. You can find more of her art at http://merchantofmarvels.blogspot.com

“What’s in your wallet?” the credit card commercial used to ask. I don’t recall seeing it recently — a risky thing to ask in these days of economic shakiness.

In contrast, what seems to be a risk-free question for readers at any time is “What’s in your to be read pile?” We all have books we plan to read — perhaps nothing more than a mental list of those we’ve heard about which intrigue us, perhaps a wish list we created on Amazon, perhaps a literal pile of books waiting for us to get to the bottom (except we never do because we keep adding to it).

So how about you?

Summer is over, and many readers used a part of their vacation time to kick back and enjoy a good book. But every day authors announce new releases, and the fall line up seems full of a wealth of new books. Then there are the classics — the books everyone else talks about that we’ve never picked up ourselves, though we’ve been meaning to. For writers, there are also books of friends and colleagues.

So, what’s in your walle to-be-read pile?

Mine includes a G. K. Chesterton I’ve already started. This author’s name is often mentioned right after C. S. Lewis and J. R. R. Tolkien, and numerous people have quoted him. It’s time, I decided, for me to find out about the man’s writing first hand. So I picked up a collection of his Father Brown stories from the library.

I also just received the newest CSFF Blog Tour selection, Andrew Peterson’s The Monster in the Hollow. Earlier in the week I received Stephen Lawhead’s The Bone House, second in the Bright Empires series along with Ross Lawhead’s (yes, Stephen’s son) The Realms Thereunder. I also have George R. R. Martin’s The Game of Thrones in waiting.

To be honest, I have another ten or more in the pile, some from friends on-line, many I’ve started. It would simply take too long to list all of them. Consequently, I’ve named my top five.

How about you? Let’s start with your top five to-be-read books. If you’d like to include more, feel free. But I’d also be interested in how the book made your list — recommendation? general buzz? curiosity?

This should be fun. 😀

A popular pastor and author, Randy Alcorn has given Christians many works of nonfiction on topics ranging from life issues, birth control, stewardship, and especially living in light of eternity. Yet he has also penned bestselling  fiction like Dominion, Deadline, and the award-winning Safely Home. Now in this first of a two-part series, Alcorn shares his thoughts on the power of story, Christians’ responses to speculative genres, writing Courageous for the new film, and the prophesied New Heavens and New Earth.

What led to your love of God-honoring sci-fi and fantasy?

As I child, I loved to read science fiction and fantasy. I was the kid who, after mom said “lights out,” turned on the flashlight and read comic books and science fiction under the covers.

As an adult, I’m still a big science fiction fan (I went to a Star Trek convention and had a blast, but no, I wasn’t dressed like a Klingon). I believe science fiction is the result of mankind’s God-given sense of adventure, wonder, creativity, and imagination. It emerges from being made in God’s image.

Like everything else undertaken by sinful humans, science fiction is often riddled with false philosophies and assumptions that glorify mankind and ignore God. But this shouldn’t cause us to dismiss its glimpses of what an infinitely creative God might one day fashion across the broad expanse of the new heavens and the New Earth. (See the EPM website for more on the New Earth.) Is God’s imagination less than that of his image-bearers? Or is the height of human imagination at its best a reflection of the infinite creativity of the divine mind?

When we get excited reading Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings trilogy or Lewis’s The Chronicles of Narnia, it’s not our sinfulness that arouses that excitement. It’s our God-given hunger for adventure, for new realms and new beings, for new beauties and new knowledge. God has given us a longing for new worlds.

As a nonfiction writer and Bible teacher, I begin by seeing what Scripture actually says. As a novelist, I take that revelation and add to it the vital ingredient of imagination. As C. S. Lewis said, “While reason is the natural organ of truth, imagination is the organ of meaning.” In the words of Francis Schaeffer, “The Christian is the really free man—he is free to have imagination. This too is our heritage. The Christian is the one whose imagination should fly beyond the stars.”

Schaeffer always started with God’s revealed truth. But he exhorted us to let that truth fuel our imagination. Imagination should not fly away from the truth but fly upon the truth.

When I wrote my books Edge of Eternity and The Chasm, both otherworldly tales with an allegorical feel, I wanted to help readers understand that we best grasp the very world we live in when we see it through new eyes. My goal is to take the reader to another world. In that place, you can’t take for granted the things you take for granted here. In fact, in that other world, you are able to see things that are just as real in our own lives, but we lack the power to see them.

Fiction, including fantasy and science fiction, has that power—to let you see through fresh eyes because you are thinking differently. As a reader, sometimes getting far enough away from your life allows you to look back and see yourself for the first time.

How do great stories point us to the Gospel and the New Earth?

Why do we love great stories? Because they are pictures of the greatest story. There hasn’t ever been a story yet with people living happily ever after, since people die. But one story will come out that way. It’s a true story, and you and I are part of it.

Our Redeemer is our King, who took on death and hell, and defeated them. The first three chapters of God’s story, as told in the Bible, set up the unfolding drama of redemption. The last three chapters show how God will judge evil, reward good, and come down to the New Earth to live with His children forever. He will wipe away every tear from their eyes, and there will be no more suffering and evil.

This is the greatest story ever told. Secular reviewers often say of a book, “This is a powerful redemptive story.” The very concept of a redemptive story flows from the Bible’s story of redemption. It’s the prototype of all great stories.

As a young Christian, I lost myself in the fiction of C. S. Lewis and J.R. R. Tolkien because they reflected a drama with eternal stakes. Though they were fiction, they were filled with far more truth than the world’s nonfiction. Tolkien and Lewis spoke of “true myth”, describing how the real epics of God’s creation and redemption are the substance that casts the shadows of the world’s myths. The myths are signposts pointing to truths far greater and truer than themselves.

People long for stories that give their lives meaning. You couldn’t make up a better story than the truth of God’s unfolding drama of redemption. You can’t find a greater hero than Jesus. The climax will be the return of the King and the establishing of His kingdom.

Why have many Christians tended to avoid visionary stories?

[SF editor’s note: The following section was revised Nov. 21, 2011, at the request of Eternal Perspective Ministries.]

Some Christians view fiction as the opposite of truth. But sometimes it opens eyes to the truth more effectively than nonfiction.

There’s still a stereotype perpetuated by believers who seem to take pride in saying, “I never read Christian fiction because it’s so syrupy and unrealistic; it’s poor quality.” I hear this so often that I have a standard response: “How do you know that if you never read Christian fiction?” Actually, it’s just the popular thing to say, but those who say it are uninformed. Anyone who has actually read much fiction written by Christians in the last ten years knows there are many high quality stories, well-researched and well-written, dealing realistically with all kinds of serious issues. They are no more predictable or preachy than bestselling or award-winning secular novels.

The second bestselling book of all time is Pilgrim’s Progress, a work of fiction written by John Bunyan in the 1670s. It may also be the second most influential book in history.

Jesus taught in parables. He told stories to capture imaginations and move hearts. The reason I started writing fiction in the early 90s was that I love good stories, and I believe they have a Trojan Horse effect.

People open the doors of their minds to a story. The Trojan Horse comes in and the next thing you know the soldiers sneak out and take over the city of the mind. It’s not manipulation, it’s a way of communicating that captures the imagination and moves the heart.

Here’s an example. My novel Deadline has a subplot that involves abortion. Jake Woods was involved with an abortion decision in his past and is plagued by guilt, and ends up in a group of men talking about abortion.

Years ago, our daughters played volleyball and one of the team moms happened to be an outspoken pro-choice advocate. One of the other moms gave her Deadline. I thought, “Oh no! I wish she’d given her one of my other novels instead!”

As much as I knew about the power of fiction, I assumed it was a bad introduction to my writing for this particular woman. Three weeks later, I was sitting at a volleyball game. I hadn’t seen this woman since she’d been given the book. I saw her coming, walking rapidly toward me.

I braced myself, thinking “Here it comes.”

She pointed her finger at me, and said, “Somebody gave me that novel of yours!” Uncomfortable pause. Then she said, “I loved it!”

I was shocked. She asked, “You know what my favorite part of that novel was?”

“I don’t have a clue.”

This non-Christian woman said, “When you showed the conception of a child from Heaven’s viewpoint.”

That was the single most dramatically prolife aspect of the book, and it was her favorite part! I don’t know if she totally reversed her position on abortion, but I know that it profoundly affected her thinking in a way that simply would not have happened just by reading my non-fiction books on the subject. The truth is, she probably would never have read books titled Why Prolife? or ProLife Answers to ProChoice Arguments. And if she had, her defenses would have been up. That’s the power of fiction—to get past the worldview gate-keeper and touch both the heart and the mind.

Next week: more on Alcorn’s novelization for the forthcoming film Courageous, and why studying and anticipating the New Heavens and the New Earth helps Christians grow, in both their imaginations and their love for Christ.

Randy Alcorn is an author and the founder of Eternal Perspective Ministries (EPM), a nonprofit ministry dedicated to teaching principles of God’s Word and assisting the church in ministering to the unreached, unfed, unborn, uneducated, unreconciled, and unsupported people around the world. “My ministry focus is communicating the strategic importance of using our earthly time, money, possessions and opportunities to invest in need-meeting ministries that count for eternity,” Alcorn says. “I do that by trying to analyze, teach and apply the implications of Christian truth.”

Before starting EPM in 1990, Randy served as a pastor for fourteen years. He holds degrees in theology and biblical studies, and has taught on the adjunct faculties of Multnomah University and Western Seminary in Portland, Oregon.

Randy has written more than forty books including the best-sellers Heaven, The Treasure Principle, and the Gold Medallion winner Safely Home.

Alcorn resides in Gresham, Oregon with his wife, Nanci. They have two married daughters and are the proud grandparents of four grandsons. Randy enjoys hanging out with his family, biking, tennis, research, and reading.

You may contact Eternal Perspective Ministries at www.epm.org or 39085 Pioneer Blvd., Suite 206, Sandy, OR 97055 or 503.668.5200. Follow Randy on Facebook, Twitter, and on his blog.

Christian corporation with staff of mostly elderly retirees, thirtysomething parents, and rarer college or high-school students, seeks responsible Christian fiction writer for fun, games, and long walks on the beach — but only so long as writer can use said fun, games, and long walks, which are otherwise useless, as part of a far greater good to include and endorse Moral Values and Safe, Family-Friendly Themes in the resulting product of fiction.

Must adhere strictly to the perceived rules of Allegory, and either include an overt call to Conversion or else include a “subtly” overt Symbolic call to the same.

Christian storytellers with no other skills beyond writing and yarn-spinning need not apply.

Optimal candidate will instead also be skilled in religious programming and evangelicalese, and have a preexisting platform of nonfiction Church Ministry —

(Job announcement is interrupted by static, which pops erratically and ominously. It is finally interrupted by a moan and a snarl, then a husky, snarling voice like Darkseid.)

“The dragons are still watching.”

Imagination Dragons

After my two-part rebuttal against frequent calls for Christian writers to target only secular readers (Why we should write fiction for Christians), it occurred to me that since C.S. Lewis wrote about stealing past “watchful dragons” who guard against dull, familiar guises, similar shields remain firmly in place. But they may be formed by an entirely new set of stigmas.

These words from Lewis’s essay On Stories are among his most-quoted phrases, especially among the Christian-visionary reading/writing community. After Lewis had already begun exploring the pictures he had long had in mind for stories like The Chronicles of Narnia — and was not trying simply to write Christianity-promoting propaganda — it nevertheless occurred to him that these new fairy-tale-like stories could actually fulfill another purpose:

I thought I saw how stories of this kind could steal past a certain inhibition which paralyzed much of my own religion since childhood. Why did one find it so hard to feel as one was told one ought to feel about God or about the sufferings of Christ? I thought the chief reason was that one was told one ought to. An obligation can freeze feelings. And reverence itself did harm. The whole subject was associated with lowered voices; almost as if it were something medical. But suppose casting all these things into an imaginary world, stripping them of their stained-glass and Sunday school associations, one could make them for the first time appear in their real potency? Could one not thus steal past the watchful dragons? I thought one could.

Yet I suggest one should read Lewis’s Meditation in a Toolshed essay to, er, shed more light on this. He describes standing in the dark structure, from outside looking at a beam of light. This Lewis called Contemplation. But when he moved to look along the light itself, and saw what the light revealed outside the walls — that was a more personal experience: Enjoyment.

So what did these Imagination Dragons watch for, to reject if they saw it? The sense of must-do Contemplation. Any presentation of truth that sounded “religious,” which caused a reflexive religious mode to switch on, but cut off resulting imagination and Godly joy. “Sunday school associations,” jargon, plastic decorations — many of which resulted, I would suggest, from previous attempts to use art and creativity to help truth go down more easily. They may have engaged the mind, or even supported intellectual Contemplation as Lewis would term it. But they didn’t empower self-forgetting, God-enamored Enjoyment.

What was Lewis’s response? Don’t fight against the Imagination Dragons. Instead, remove all the bulky armor once originally intended to keep Truths poignant, but which now weighed them down. Instead, dress Truths in new vestments of blazing color; let them run freely, and dance past those dragons — powered by God’s grace, creativity, and Enjoyment.

Many Christians are still called to do the same. And those who grew up with stilted religious mindsets, whose forebears wrongly severed creativity, joy, and natural emotions (“religious affections,” Jonathan Edwards called them) from Truth — all such readers need new stories, songs, art, and more, to battle their Imagination Dragons watching for religious trappings. Yet might we forget about another species of watchful dragons?

Churchian Dragons

Some of these dragons guard against supposed evils in stories, but contrary to many writers’ rhetoric (including my own!) refuting that approach, most of these Dragons simply ignore many visionary stories because they seem useless. I’ve seen it done. And they hardly realize they’re doing it. It’s axiomatic. Instinct. Their perceived light that reveals all other beliefs.

They do not guard their imaginations against pietistic platitudes, but the opposite: against anything that doesn’t seem Useful, or Serve a Moral Purpose, or Help My Kids Learn Values.

Am I saying morality and values aren’t important? By no means! But they, along with truth study, reading Scripture rightly, the very Gospel call of repentance and faith itself, and Godly imagination, are all means to other ends: eternal joy in the One Who saved us for His glory.

Already, though, Christian visionary writers have a few battle strategies against Churchian Dragons. I believe many of them are wrong or, at best, severely limited in their effects:

1. Ignore them. “I’m shaking the dust off my sandals; if they won’t listen, I shall go to the Gentiles.” But as the previous series argued, that neglects the Bible’s call to love Christ’s bride the Church, and others’ calls to write stories for her benefit.
2. Taunt them. “I Art in your general direction! Your mother was a legalist and your father smelt of fundamentalism!” Some may hear the traces of truth in those taunts, and turn away from the pietistic platitudes — and I hope to Christ and more-Biblical life practice. But more likely, this just makes the Dragons roar and spit more fire.
3. Write for Churchian Dragons anyway.

Naturally, I prefer the last option. But it can be a trap. And I think we see many authors seem to fall into that trap, because even many people who buy Christian visionary novels are doing it Mostly For the Children or out of moralistic pragmatism.

Are most people seeking books with this question: Is this visionary novel well-written and based organically in truth, to help me draw closer to God through Enjoyment of story? Some do! Thank God for them. But one can guess the likelier motive: I want a nice book that does not contain Objectionable Material but will instead have Moral Values, and reinforces for (select one: myself / my kids) all the Useful Things we need to be better Christians.

Churchian Dragons: 1. Christian Visionary Authors: well, 0.1.

But does today’s score even matter if many visionary authors are playing on the Moralistic Pragmatism-owned field anyway?

Of course, some Christian authors have gotten past the Churchian Dragons’ watch. Lewis himself did. And let’s face it: many authors — whom some doctrine-thumping Christians like me may like to tweak — have been successful with their fantastic stories. Frank Peretti. Tim LaHaye and Jerry B. Jenkins. Maybe also those guys who did the Superbook series.

But maybe they got past the Dragons only because their works were considered Useful.

That’s why I wonder if Christian visionary authors have really been very successful at all.

How do we change this?

How might one do as Lewis did, in reverse, and thus cast God-glorifying story Enjoyments themselves into imaginary worlds, strip them of their negative associations — “uselessness” and moral-pragmatism slavery — and make them appear in their true potency?

One of the best ways to begin discerning solutions would be to survey those who’ve already stolen past the Churchian Dragons. How did they do it? And do we want to do the same? In some cases: no, we don’t. But might we want consciously to put on that disguise? Or at least avoid the appearance of flagrantly anti-Churchian Dragon behavior, such as banging on our thick metal “We’re All About Story As Enjoyment and Not Just Propaganda”™ brand armor?

Names and more thoughts, next week, in Stories for Christians 2: Stealing past Churchian Dragons. Before then, what are your ideas, or suggestions of authors who’ve done this well?

P.S.: Also see tomorrow’s article from one author who’s well-known for meeting Christian readers where they are, in his fiction and nonfiction, while also challenging them to move beyond moralism into Enjoyment, now and anticipating the New Earth: Randy Alcorn.

Black & White
A friend and I were actually talking about today’s topic without her realizing it. She’s reading through the Aeneid, a book I have serious issues with. (Okay, so I’m an oddball English Lit major who dislikes most classics as a whole.) The girl makes me look illiterate, I admit. Our conversation, ironically, thrust me into the opposite role of what I wanted to discuss today, and my friend into the role of making my point unwittingly. She said:

Friend: It’s Aeneid time.

Me: I think he’s arrogant. Seriously, half my problem with Iliad, Odyssey, and Aeneid is I think they’re all a bunch of selfish jerks.

Friend: To us, yeah, he might be. To that culture, no. He was the son of Venus, a prince of Troy, a heroic warrior, and the leader of the Trojan refugees. To the people of his time, he was allowed to be a bit prideful. Being able to have pride and a bit of arrogance was part of what his status entailed. Achilles is also full of himself, again, because he deserved certain honors (honors that no self respecting man would have denied him)
and Agamemnon took them away from him. Odysseus is similar.

Me: Achilles whines like a teenage girl.

Friend: If they lived today, they’d look like arrogant idiots. In that time, all of their grievances are justifiable, as is their pride.

Me: And Odysseus…. Eh. Hey, it took all of freshman year of college to get over people praying to the stupid Greek gods. The Greek pantheon would’ve made an atheist out of me.

Friend: Well, for Achilles, it wasn’t just that his girl had been taken way. Briseis was representative of honor that he had attained through warfare. Achilles had been told earlier in his life that he could either live a long life and never be known, or he could have eternal fame and die at Troy. He chose the second, and when Agamemnon took Briseis, he was basically taking away the thing that Achilles had chosen to live toward. hehe. They’re quite screwy.

Me: They make [a group of very adulterous characters we’re both familiar with] look chaste. I don’t know why it riles me like that. I mean, I get the logic; but the problem is I still can’t get over how crappy they were.

Friend: Hey, it’s just good you weren’t a Classics major. Otherwise, you wouldn’t have had a choice but to read those multiple times. =P

Me: Well, I did read them a couple times – at least excerpts. My classical world lit I read all three in a row. It’s funny what we harp on, though. I harp on how childish and arrogant they were; other people were bothered by Odysseus promising freedom to a captured Trojan spy, then killing him. Oddly, that part didn’t bother me.

Friend: I’m in the habit of just putting myself into the mindset of that time. Then I can understand what the poets were saying and I’m not really bothered by any of it.

Me: I can sometimes. The problem is, I might understand the mindset, but it doesn’t keep my hackles from going up.

As illustrated, my world doesn’t encounter much gray. I’m used to writing characters with some pretty twisted beliefs, so reciting a logical appeal to me doesn’t necessarily mean much. At the end of the day, it doesn’t matter how logical your thought process is if your initial assumptions are faulty. I’m that annoying chick who politely informs you I don’t care what your personal feelings are; those feelings don’t negate the truth of the matter.

But the truth is, my friend is right: The point is, regardless of my own worldview, I have to allow the culture of Aeneas and Odysseus to dictate the virtues and vices of the world in which they live, just like I have to accept where a pantheon of gods, goddesses, demigods, human sacrifices, liars, swindlers, and arrogant, man-whorish thugs behaving like pre-pubescent teenage girls is normative.

Going Gray
This black-and-white world of mine is simple, really. What is, is; and what isn’t, isn’t. Lying’s bad; honesty’s good. Marriage is good; divorce is bad. You know, until some family friends go through a divorce, or a person you admire is caught in a series of lies, or the mentor you wanted let you down. You find out your teachers aren’t perfect and your best bet is to be picky when choosing them. The world changes when you meet people whose political, moral, religious, and cultural views clash with your own–but I’m starting to think the more similar your worldviews are, the greater the paradigm shift when you realize the true meaning of “no one is perfect.”

Jesus had something going there when he asked, “Who is good but God alone?” He liked comments like that: “Was man made for the Sabbath or the Sabbath for man?” and “Which is lawful on the Sabbath, to save a life or destroy it?” Some of the people following him around picked up on Jesus’ quirk, asking things like “Who’s my neighbor?” and “Who sinned, this man or his parents?”

He said other things, too, like this:

Some Pharisees came to him to test him. They asked, “Is it lawful for a man to divorce his wife for any and every reason?”

 “Haven’t you read,” [Jesus] replied, “that at the beginning the Creator ‘made them male and female,’ and said, ‘For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and the two will become one flesh’? So they are no longer two, but one flesh. Therefore what God has joined together, let no one separate.”

“Why then,” they asked, “did Moses command that a man give his wife a certificate of divorce and send her away?”

 Jesus replied, “Moses permitted you to divorce your wives because your hearts were hard. But it was not this way from the beginning. I tell you that anyone who divorces his wife, except for sexual immorality, and marries another woman commits adultery.”
~Matthew 19:3-9

Part of what Jesus wanted people to do was think about what they were saying, think about what was rooted so deep in their own culture they couldn’t see the ramifications.

Yeah, not working on the Sabbath is good. But was man meant to be enslaved to a 24-hour period? Is it good to let a man die because it’s Saturday?

Is it good to place honor above justice, or pride over integrity?

Storyworlds force us to deal with the gray: wizard schools, talking animals, a band of thieves and outlaws, white collar criminals, thugs, violent heroes with no sense of abstinence, cheats and swindlers, killers, honor killings, interfaith marriages, and twisted theology.

The truth is, my reaction to The Iliad, Odyssey, and Aeneid probably says more about me than their composers. One, I have absolutely no respect for the Greco-Roman pantheon or the human/demigod heroes the poems herald. Two, while I might belittle their egos and overall morals, I didn’t even blink at the stark reality of the violence and war-ethics they demonstrated.

Authorial Silence
But does that mean Jesus condoned trivializing the Sabbath or divorce? Or, if you really want, does God condone necromancy, incorporating pagan worship into worship of him, polygamy, arrogance, swearing, getting drunk, cheating, interfaith marriage, or a dozen other things?

I’m just saying: Clearly, the culture around them didn’t see polygamy (or having a mistress/concubine) as adultery; didn’t see fault in throwing your concubine or your daughters to a mob; didn’t see fault in trying to kill a man for knocking over a shrine.

But does that really mean God thought those things were faultless, too? I mean, let’s face it – the sons of Korah got swallowed up by the earth for their rebellion, but nothing of the sort happened when some of the Hebrews tried to kill Gideon for tearing down his father’s shrine. God struck Aaron’s sons dead for performing their duties wrong, remember?

Then there’s Balaam. Remember Balaam’s donkey? That’s only part of the story. The rest is, he was apparently a pagan seer whom the either Midianite or Moabite king paid to put a curse on the Hebrews. The guy tried three times – and three times met instead the God of the Hebrews and blessed them. After that, Balaam told the king to try seducing the Hebrews instead.

And they succeeded.

So here’s the question: Was Balaam a true prophet, or a false one? Did he speak for the God of gods, or for any god?

You know, it’s funny, I had thought Balaam was a Hebrew seer until about two years ago when I read the story more closely. Balaam’s a diviner for hire. By most accounts, God shouldn’t have had anything to do with him.

But. . . he did.

There’s this odd balance of what the author meant and what the author’s personal worldview is. As a whole, my characters over the years have broken the entire Law ten times over. I’ve let whole nations indulge in selfish pleasures, pagan practices, mix pagan and Christian beliefs and practices, keep their terrible theology, and hang on to their vices paraded as virtues. Some encourage honor killings; others encourage greed; others encourage adultery. And if you tried to piece out my personal worldview by those of the worlds I’ve created, you’d be completely off-target.

Does God think prophecy for profit is good?

I mean, he did write this thing.

Does God think that summoning the dead is good?

Is it okay to vow to sacrifice the first thing you see when you get home, only to have your young daughter run out to greet you?

Is it good form in battle to make three long rows of captured soldiers and kill two of the three rows of men?

Is it good or bad to put your reputation as a good host over your family’s safety?

Is it good or bad to hang out with swindlers, thieves, homosexuals, drunks, drug addicts, adulterers, lazy people, and manipulators?

I mean, Paul writes twice that the OT was penned for our instruction.

The prophets claim that Sodom and Gomorrah testify against Judah and Israel; and that

“In spite of all this, [Israel’s] unfaithful sister Judah did not return to me with all her heart, but only in pretense,” declares the LORD. The LORD said to me, “Faithless Israel is more righteous than unfaithful Judah. Go, proclaim this message toward the north:    “‘Return, faithless Israel,’ declares the LORD,    ‘I will frown on you no longer, for I am faithful,’ declares the LORD,   ‘I will not be angry forever” (Jeremiah 3.10-12).

Now, if you aren’t sure, Northern Israel was in rebellion from its inception. God took 10 tribes from the Davidic dynasty and gave them to a man named Jeroboam, but Jeroboam promptly wielded Jewish worship as a political tool and broke the entire Torah in an attempt to keep people from deserting him and returning to Solomon’s son Rehoboam. Most of the most infamous kings come from Northern Israel. Ahab and Jezebel’s granddaughter married a southern, Davidic king and promptly tried to wipe out the entire line of David. She all but succeeded, too. Their lines of succession are bloody; their entire mentality is one of rebellion; and they worship anything and everything under the sun. And when they do worship the One God, they worship in the exact manner God told them not to – Which is . . . where those Samaritans came from in the New Testament.

“Faithless Israel is more righteous than unfaithful Judah.” Now that’s a thought. But is God really suggesting that everything Northern Israel did was acceptable?

Go read those northern prophets sometime. Or find out what the Ten Lost Tribes are.

You know, every time Matt Chandler preaches out of Romans 1, he points out that God’s silence is worse than his wrath. In other words, if I’m doing something wrong, and my dad punishes me for it, then that’s one thing. But if my dad decided to just let me self-destruct, that’s another thing entirely.

Keep in mind . . . some of these cultures don’t exist anymore . . . at least, not as they were. Some of these people, history can’t even tell exactly what part of the world they actually existed in.

Sometimes, I create institutions for the sole purpose of destroying them. Sometimes, I create them to redeem them. Sometimes, I’m not concerned in the slightest their fate.

And sometimes, I have to accept that womanizing egomaniacs were acceptable in some cultures in order to engage the story world.