What is it about the Narnia books that we love? The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, first in the order C. S. Lewis wrote the series, has four main characters and none of them is the hero. With the omniscient point of view, readers do not benefit from close character identification. The plot is straightforward, without multiple subplots, and the writing wouldn’t be considered lyrical. Why, then, do we love these books so much?

I’ll admit, being the youngest in my family, I connected with Lucy, also the youngest of her siblings. But quickly, the story becomes much more than the tale of a brother agitating his sister, of the others not trusting her. Before the reader is half way through the book, the character we’re pulling for is … Narnia.

We don’t want the White Witch and her wolf-guards to threaten, torture, and kill the poor people of Narnia who already are doomed to endure a winter without promise or end.

And when Aslan returns bringing with him first Father Christmas, then Spring itself with a number of happy revilers, we see the beauty and the joy of Narnia and her king. If you take a good look at Lucy and Susan’s faces in the adjacent version of the cover, you’ll see joy radiating from them. It is this joy, I submit, that makes readers love Narnia.

Lewis, I believe, created just what he wanted to create—a world that capture wonder, or at least suggested it. In his autobiographical account of his turning to Christ, Surprised by Joy, Lewis uncovered the fleeting nature of joy that pointed to a more enduring experience. I see Narnia as Lewis’s attempt to paint joy using words.

And he succeeded.

Narnia is magic—a country found by entering a wardrobe. And it’s secret—a shared secret that extends from generation to generation.

Narnia is also marvelous. The animals talk and fauns exist and children rise to become kings and queens.

Narnia is real, symbolically so. Something inside us resonates with this place—we recognize it as the land where we want to go.

But ultimately, Narnia is Aslan. Without him, winter would rule and Narnia would be nothing but a dangerous, frozen, mirthless place. With Aslan, there’s partying and gifts and laughter, birds and flowing rivers and springtime flowers.

Perhaps the greatest thing C. S. Lewis did in The Chronicles of Narnia was to create Narnia. Yes, the stories are compelling and the characters believable. But it’s Narnia that lives in our imagination, whether we’re reading about Lucy and Edmund or Eustace and Jill. It’s Narnia that we fear for in The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, in Prince Caspian, in The Silver Chair, and it’s Narnia we fear for in The Last Battle.

No mistake, as I said earlier, Narnia is what it is because of Aslan, but in creating this remarkable world, C. S. Lewis gave readers a place like few others. And it is the place we love.

How God Saved Me While I Read A Novel
By Sally Apokedak

When I was a young woman, I had a job that took me to Fairbanks, Alaska, one week a month. My work auditing small stores brought me into contact with plenty of paperback book racks, and I always picked up a few books on my first day in town, to read in the evenings during the week.

One trip I found myself in my hotel, happily snuggled down with a bag of cookies, a jug of milk, and a novel—Papa’s Daughter written by Thyra Ferre Bjorn.

It was during the reading of that book that God saved me.

The author never preached a sermon or invited her readers to ask Jesus into their hearts. None of her characters decided to accept Jesus as Savior.

Here’s the part of the story that convicted me:

A husband tells his wife not to go out because she’s eight months pregnant and the sidewalks are icy. After he leaves, the wife decides she can visit her sister and be home again before her husband gets back from work.

She slips on the ice and loses the baby.

Knowing how much her husband was looking forward to the child’s birth, the woman is terrified that he’ll hate her. But he forgives her without a word of rebuke. He rushes to her hospital bed, hugs her tightly, and weeps with her.

Here’s the gospel message in that passage:

A rebellious woman disobeys the one in authority over her, and her disobedience causes the death of his beloved first-born son. She dreads seeing the one in authority because she knows she deserves his wrath. But the good husband forgives. Instead of holding on to his love for the child, he turns away from the son and chooses to love the woman. He forgives her and restores the relationship she broke by her sin. He doesn’t yell. He doesn’t exact payment in any form. The innocent child dies, paying the consequences for the woman’s sin, and his father forgives.

But I didn’t see that gospel until many years later when I was telling a friend how I was saved. All I saw as I was reading, was the surface story and how that related to my life experience:

A women disobeyed her husband and killed the child he loved. He forgave her.

I will never forget how my own sin slammed into me as I cried with the character over her loss. For the first time, I realized that I had killed two human beings by abortion. They were children! As that character and her husband wept over the loss of the baby, I was forced to see that the babies I’d killed were real people. And they were God’s children, not mine. I didn’t create them. I didn’t own them.

I had always seen God as a party-pooper who wanted to withhold good things from me. After all, who was hurt with my drugs, sex, and rock and roll? It was all harmless fun, I figured. But that night I saw that my harmless fun was wicked, wicked stuff and that I had fallen to the point of murdering innocents, all for the sake of having my fun. All God had ever done was love me and try to protect me from my own evil impulses, and all I had ever done was treat him with contempt.

I was so sorry, and in that instant God’s love and comfort flooded over me, and I knew he forgave me as surely as the woman’s husband, in the book, had forgiven her. I was a new creature—in the blink of an eye. My life was forever changed.

I doubt that Thyra Ferre Bjorn was making a statement about abortion when she wrote her book in the 1950s. I don’t think she intended to prick the heart of a young woman, some thirty years later, who had purposefully killed two of her children via the abortionist’s table.

But God used her book to save my life. And he did that even though I didn’t understand how the author had woven the gospel into the story. My mind didn’t get the whole picture she painted, but my heart got enough of it.

A book is first published by a big New York publisher in 1958. I stumble across a copy in 1984 in a dusty little store in a far-away Alaskan town. By the time I read the book, the author has been dead nine years. Who owns the characters? Who owns the story?

The author owns the story she created, the reader owns the story she reads, and over all the Holy Spirit owns the book and the author and the reader.

Before I was born, God moved Thyra Ferre Bjorn to write a story that was perfectly fit for my needs.

Sometimes I wonder if we should worry less about what makes for Christian fiction and just write. We Christian writers have the great privilege of being yokefellows with God. I think that should free us up to write fearlessly. We can try new things. We can weave the gospel into the background instead of having it out front. We can put in Christ figures that are as flawed as David and Satan figures that are beautiful and fun to be around. We can write for friends and family without worrying about whether we’ll ever be published or not. God has given us our minds and our unique life experiences, and he has given us the skill and the desire to write our stories. We can trust him to prepare readers with ears to hear.

Sally Apokedak - 2009 ACFW Genesis Winner, Speculative Fiction

~~~~~~~~~~~~

Sally Apokedak, grand prize winner of the recent Novel Journey Out of the Slush Pile contest, lives with her son and daughter and old, old mother in the lovely southern city of Atlanta. She does most of her blogging at Whispers of Dawn and some of her commenting here at Speculative Faith.

A cake in "steampunk" design, as seen on CakeWrecks.Blogspot.com

That was me last week, seconds after I had name-dropped a certain term while interviewing someone for my day job. She was a bed-and-breakfast owner; I was your mild-mannered reporter for a “great” “metropolitan” weekly. And based on her expressed wishes to have more of an antique feel to the place, to match its hundred-year antiquity, I mentioned that things such as vintage fashion and design are actually growing popular because of “steampunk.”

Oh, good one, I thought, drop a geek-term and make her have to smile and nod.

But actually she agreed, saying her daughter was so into that type of thing, especially with long dresses. So not only did I learn another lesson about arrogantly thinking “regular” folks don’t know about that kind of stuff, I thought to ensure I knew the term’s definition myself.

Initial research seems to confirm my previous impression: steampunk actually doesn’t constitute a great portion of popular literature or movies so far. From what I’ve seen and read, it is more of a flavor. Science-fiction-meets-Victorian-alternate-histories themes, often with pipes, gears, valves and little circular dials, are being integrated into all kinds of designs for instruments, custom computer-screen casing, toys, even decorative cakes.

By contrast, cursory searches for “steampunk” fiction don’t turn up a lot, at least not yet: a fiction tribute or two to Jules Verne, a couple of early-hundreds Disney films that didn’t do too well (Atlantis and Treasure Planet, the latter of which I’ve seen and still enjoy), some graphic novels, the 2009 film Sherlock Holmes, or the upcoming sequel series to Avatar: The Last Airbender, called The Legend of Korra. (Biased moment: hurrah for more animated Avatar! and may M. Night Shyamalan repent of his sins and find inner peace, away from studio funding).

My first exposure to “steampunk” came from 2002’s Treasure Planet and one of the first all-in-front-of-bluescreen films, 2005’s Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow. I’m still not quite sure why I like them so much, or the “steampunk” idea. And that becomes more confusing when one takes into account that these films have devoted fans, but bombed in theaters.

Some stories also necessitate the quotes around the term steampunk, because technically they’re not set in some alternate-history or even alternate-universe version of this world with steam-powered devices. Better terms, I suggest, might be retro-fantasy, or historical fantasy.

Yet it seems steampunk is a catch-all description for many kinds of stories, or designs based on implicit ideas, that suggest: what if such-and-such event occurred in a world/our history, or this invention caught on more than it actually did, or mankind never had this or that war, or helium dirigibles revolutionized the world instead of airplanes, or silicon chips were never developed?

A waterbender-powered submarine from "Avatar: The Last Airbender"

You might think of revisions or supplements to that definition. And of course, steampunk concepts aren’t just applied to alternate-history stories set in this world. Howl’s Moving Castle, my wife tells me, included a fantasy world with steampunk elements. The American-created-so-please-don’t-mock-me-for-watching-a-supposedly-anime series, Avatar: The Last Airbender, incorporated all kinds of fantastic retro-fantasy concepts, especially in the Fire Nation and the machines used (‘ware spoilers!) to attack it — which gets really fun when you have machines powered by the magic-like abilities of earth-, fire- or water-controlling people called “benders.”

Two questions, for which you might know the answers better than me:

Have Christians caught up to steampunk?

"Larklight" (Philip Reeve, 2006), the first of three fun stories set in alternate-history Victorian England, Earth and space

As has been firmly established by the wisdom of our Speculative-Faith comment sages (may they be blessed), Christians tend to be about two years behind cultural trends. (Thank God our best and brightest somehow missed emulating the “Spice Girls,” but some of us are still stuck on “Fear Factor”-themed youth-groupie stunts.) That means that if steampunk is popular now among readers of visionary fiction, it might be a while before publishers catch up. But have you seen retro-fantasy styles or themes in Christian visionary novels, for youth readers or others?

Why is steampunk growing in popularity?

My best theory probably did make my bed-and-breakfast acquaintance smile and nod politely.

I ventured the idea that, at least clothing-wise, as fashions just keep going up to here and down to there, there just isn’t much left to strip off. Naturally the culture could swing the other way: back in time, to “vintage” styles, maybe a little tricked out to add a fantasy edge, but as a subtle kind of “rebellion” against the notion that sees new and modern as always better.

If that’s nearly true, I may have found an actual theological reason to enjoy steampunk. Often the past is better, and history is fantastic, whether it’s real or with what-if-Jules-Verne’s-world-actually-happened? notions. It’s also fun, and I’m still trying to discern why. Want to help?

Rant time!

Books are made up of words. That may sound self-evident, but it’s a deeper thought than you’re thinking it is. If you’re going to write books, you should use words like a good filmmaker uses a camera, music, and actors. Not just to tell a story, but to write.

This is where that old maxim “Show, don’t tell” comes from. It’s actually very hard to pin down what’s meant by that rule. It’s one way we say, “Look, don’t just tell us what happens to what characters. Don’t just tell us a story. Write us one.”

Words are capable of so much. They make poetry. They create sensation in an almost mystical way; they engage our imaginations. They sweep us into their rhythms, their subtext, their subtle beauty or harshness. They create emotion. They enable the craft of POV. If you really use them.

When I was cleaning out my books recently, I debated whether to get rid of Guy Gavriel Kay’s The Summer Tree. I had decided that I want the omnibus edition with all three books in the Fionavar Tapestry, so there wasn’t much point in keeping a used paperback copy of just one. But I pulled it off the shelf and flipped through it, and I could not get rid of it. You know why? Not because of the story. Because of the words. Because if I ever want a book to sing me to sleep one of these nights, it might just be that one.

(I was being figurative in that last sentence. The truth is, when I first read the aforementioned omnibus edition, which I’d gotten from the library, it kept me all night until sunrise. The words sing; so does the story; but they sing one incredibly riveting song.)

Last night I curled up on the couch with a couple of my cousins and read aloud from A.A. Milne’s old poetry books, Now We Are Six and When We Were Very Young. The poems make such wonderful use of words. Milne had that distinctly British command of the language that I fear is no longer easily found.

By contrast, I recently read a book for review (and I shall leave it nameless, for now), and while the story was fine and good, I wished it hadn’t been in a book. It would have been so much better told in pictures–moving ones, or perhaps in a comic book. The problem was, the author stuffed all these words between the pages, but she really didn’t use them. She kept everything on the surface and didn’t tap into the latent power and beauty of language at all.

End of rant. For their command of language, three of my favourite Christian spec-fic authors of the day are Jeffrey Overstreet, George Bryan Polivka, and Marc Schooley. Check them out if you haven’t yet. They are worth reading–every word.

When I first started writing fantasy, science fiction—particularly space opera—was all the rage. No one was interested in fantasy. Then came the Lord of the Rings movies and speculative fiction shifted. Is it about to shift again?

True, the Hobbit has yet to be made, and there are still four Narnia books left to adapt to the big screen, but Harry Potter is finished and Disney has announced an end to their fairy tale movies. If film is an indicator of the direction books will take, I can’t help but wonder where fantasy is headed.

I suppose the swing of the pendulum is bound to teeter toward science fiction again, and I think there is some indication that process has begun. Fantasy for several years has favored the urban kind or dystopian fantasy—another name for apocalyptic or futuristic fantasy. How, I wonder, is this latter so different from futuristic science fiction?

Television has continued to produce science fiction even during this fantasy phase. Stargate: SG1 and it’s spawns have lead the way along with Battlestar Galactica. More recently V, a reprisal of an 1980s miniseries, has hit prime time.

The film industry seems to be edging toward science fiction as well. Star Trek, the 2009 prequel to the television series by that title, was well received by critics and viewers alike. And Avatar, arguably best categorized as science fantasy, was a blockbuster hit.

One way or another, speculative fiction seems to have an enduring place in our culture. Horror has even had its heyday when The Outer Limits and The Twilight Zone were two of the most watched television shows. More recently Buffy the Vampire Slayer was followed by Angel, Supernatural, and The Vampire Diaries.

The question I can’t help but ask is this: in what direction are books headed? In particular, in what direction is Christian fiction headed?

And these secondary questions: Will Christian publishers embrace speculative fiction as the culture’s love affair with the genre continues? Will “science fiction” become the next dirty word to those seeking “safe fiction” rather than God-glorifying fiction? If not “horror,” what place does “supernatural suspense” have in Christian fiction? Can fantasy and science fiction share the spot light, or will the pendulum inevitably shift to one side or the other?

While you’re pondering these questions, science fiction fans may want to check out Ray Gun Revival, Version 2.0. This online ezine for Space Opera and “Golden Age Sci Fi,” which lost its support structure when Double-Edge Publishing was sold, is relaunching February 1. Writers may submit stories and readers may subscribe to receive updates. Enjoy! 😀

Apologies for tardiness. I confess to being deathly ill, but that doesn’t usually stop me. This week, I was trying to find something honest to say, and nothing wanted to come out. The notion of faith and fictional speculation didn’t catch my heartstrings. Well, that could be a problem, given the outlet for which I’m writing. I clicked through discussions of late and found myself with no urge to spin off the fine variety of themes from this week—all more suited to the venue than anything flickering through my mind.

In desperation the other night, I asked for brainstorming assistance. My writing partner suggested I write about subtext. “No one talks about that,” he said, in a twist of beautiful irony.

If you don’t know what I mean, subtext is all the stuff happening in dialogue and action that the characters on the page aren’t willing to admit. Sometimes it arrives to us readers as blatantly obvious, and we spend the rest of the book waiting for them to mature enough to just deal, already, before this kills them or blows something up. You know.

There’s another cultivar, one I tend to find amazing when I encounter it, because I don’t mechanically understand it. Here’s what the professor in the writing manual says about it:

In the careful evocation of a subtext, the writer would learn, step by step, how to create an interior space, using details of location and objects that mirror a psychological condition…

An unthinkable thought is not one that hasn’t occurred to somebody, nor is it a thought that someone considers to be wrong. An unthinkable thought threatens a person’s entire existence and is therefore subversive and consequently can be thought of and has been thought of, but has been pushed out of the mind’s currency and subsumed into its margins where it festers.

~Charles Baxter, The Art of Subtext (Graywolf Press, 2007)

Festering is one of those things we just don’t admit to, because it’s just not Christian. Nonetheless, we all do it. We are all plagued by things that lurk around the edges of what we’ll admit to. Subversion is a dangerous thought, one to be marginalized. Subversion, in good Christian terms, ought always to be avoided.

Fascinating. Consider the subversiveness of the gospel: the complete overthrow of all human effort, of all self-reliance, of all self-worth. No wonder the entire world around us is built into locations and objects reflecting an interior space where the stark truth of Jesus Christ has been pushed out of the mind’s currency and subsumed into its margins, to fester.

The death of oneself is in some way an unthinkable thought, which is why art everywhere is moved to wrangle with death. That reality doesn’t qualify artists to be philosopher-kings as per some Platonist ideal, it just means we’re that class of people who are more open about our festering. We profess willingness to carve it out of the background for examination.

Unless we artists cease to be truth-tellers, at which point, we run into ESB’s very insightful question:

[W]hat happens if, in all your zeal to Fight the Good Fight and that’s it, you end up in Heaven and there’s nothing to fight? No poor people to feed, no heresy to condemn, nothing that makes you feel or act like a Warrior as an end to itself. All you’d have left to do is worship Christ in other ways, be it music or work, exploration, subcreation, learning and more. In such a place, when all our vestiges of self-as-“savior” are gone and there is only one Savior of us all, are you sure you would not be bored?

~E. Stephen Burnett

That, my friends, is the unspoken, fearful, festering subtext of an entire religious culture.

Are you sure you wouldn’t be bored?

The combination of these two points—avoidance and boredom—forms an interesting lens for looking at religious art. Of what are our worlds constructed, and what do their locations and objects say about that which we fear? Do we tell truth, or avoid it? What if the truth is that in our story, the real life one, feeling like a Warrior (capital W, people) is all we really want?

Do we read or sing praises for that feeling as an end in itself? To push away the daily festering?

Consider with me, for a moment, the subversiveness of daily life as worship. This unthinkable thought threatens our very existence as religious folk. It threatens to tear down our self-justifying internet wars of words. It threatens to tear down our sense of doctrine, in the sense that there’s always dross to sift. We’re human. Worship threatens everything we are when at our most comfortable.

At our most comfortable, we’re liars. We avoid and fester. We self-distract with warrior games. Artists do it all the time, same as everyone else. The only difference may be that we’ve formed a social contract in which we declare we will disavow that particular game. A social contract which transcends the bounds of religion, actually.

“The job of fiction is to find the truth inside the story’s web of lies, not to commit intellectual dishonesty in the hunt for the buck.”

~Stephen King, On Writing

We enter into that contract with ourselves, God and the world. The whole thing. It’s kind of like a marriage that way, but more like a quest, I guess. Anyone who takes on the public role of Having Something to Say About Society either does so in a position where they’re contracted to lie (we call that politics) or to tell the honest truth however they see it (we call that art). It’s probably no big wonder that arts grants are not the first priority of government.

With that public contract, we artists are just somewhat more liable for our avoidance and boredom. On the upside: subsume your deepest fears, longings or beliefs, and they will start to force their way back into the margins, demanding attention until your world is transformed.

Telling the truth doesn’t mean shutting down the imagination. It doesn’t mean avoiding possible subversion. It means plunging in. We are not here primarily to be a Warrior, though we may end up being one by accident, in the manner of great quests. (Remember the standard plot? The antagonist’s life goal is to be a hero, and the hero’s is to remain a quiet peasant boy. There’s a moral in there somewhere.) The thing we are seeking is the truth, and the process of creative expression is the quest by which we find it.

Here’s to the truth. Make sure you’re not bored with it.

Cathi-Lyn Dyck has been a published writer and poet since 2004, and a freelance editor since 2006. She can be found online at ScitaScienda.com.

In which the author copies a previous lengthy comment and fashions it into the column it should have been, about problems with “priesthood of artists” notions.

Last week I mini-ranted about Derek Webb’s interview. A lot of bloggers have been doing that. Yet most of them are the “watch-blogger” types, good and bad, and aren’t viewing Webb’s often-eyebrow-raising comments from the perspective of Christian fiction readers and writers. In short, along with some really creative insights such as we-need-to-be-more-loving and just-follow-Jesus-people, Webb seemed to say his job as artist is to show lesser Christians the light.

Anyway, a refresher — and direct quotes — is back in that catch-all column for the year’s end. Next came comments/discussion from Peter Boysen. He asked there, and elsewhere:

In what instances do you see the artist attempting to usurp the pastor’s role?

Do you think it’s possible to fix the church’s problems AND proclaim the gospel? I see your point about people who would rather nitpick than minister, but if you subscribe to the notion of the priesthood of the believer, how is someone who, in good faith, sees error in the ways of the church, usurping the pastor’s role?

Art criticism: a means to His end

My view is that we can echo the Gospel while addressing problems with the church, in our stories and other artistic creations, yet without confusing the means for the end.

From Spurgeon.org's 'Emergent Motivational Posters'

Yet both sides can lapse into “ministry myopia.” Its practitioners may act as if there is only one specific set of problems to fight against, and may forget what and Who true Christians fight for — the Savior, Who, despite His often-challenging words, also promised His people “rest.”

Example: Often in my discussions with cultural “fundamentalists” (I do not mean lovers of real Biblical truth, but those who, despite good intentions, confuse favored traditions with truth) and “emergent”-style Christians alike, I like to ask a question like this: what happens if, in all your zeal to Fight the Good Fight and that’s it, you end up in Heaven and there’s nothing to fight? No poor people to feed, no heresy to condemn, nothing that makes you feel or act like a Warrior as an end to itself. All you’d have left to do is worship Christ in other ways, be it music or work, exploration, subcreation, learning and more. In such a place, when all our vestiges of self-as-”savior” are gone and there is only one Savior of us all, are you sure you would not be bored?

Art criticism: to love the Church

Moreover, the motivation for criticism of the church, Christ’s beloved Bride, matters: it’s to edify her, yes, even as an “institution,” and not simply to criticize all of her various ills for criticism’s own sake. Christian writers, musicians and more must exhort, discern and seek to improve for God’s sake, whether that includes how we do our Art or how we teach truth and theology.

I’ve gotten a bit nervous about Francis Chan in recent months (mostly because of his seeming overemphasis on wild-’n-crazy Christianity, as if that’s a higher spiritual plane than “regular” day-to-day, plodding Christianity). But in his book Crazy Love he rightly said this:

As a pastor I hear a lot of emergent leaders talk about what is wrong with the church. It comes across as someone who doesn’t love the church. I’m a pastor first and foremost, and I’m trying to offer a solution or a model of what church should look like. I’m going back to scripture and seeing what the church was in its simplest form and trying to recreate that in my own church. I’m not coming up with anything new. I’m calling people to go back to the way it was. I’m not bashing the church. I’m loving it.

I’m also among the many Christians who want to love the Church, the Bride for whom Christ died (Ephesians 5), and want to see her more closely follow the pattern of Kingdom and Church growth — facilitated through local churches — prescribed in the Bible. Yet that can too easily overlap with, or become, criticism for its own sake, and an attitude of anti-everything-that’s-gone-on-before — the same kind of attitude C.S. Lewis termed “chronological snobbery.”

But didn’t Jesus fault religious leaders?

In recent weeks I’ve come to see that some of this is sourced by a very simplistic view of Jesus’ mission on earth. He criticized religious institutions of his day, goes this notion, so we should do that too. But this ignores the fact that Jesus didn’t fault the Pharisees only for being “religious” or because they had “institutions,” but because they ignored God’s real Word in favor of their own traditions and rejected God’s actual Word because of their pride (Mark 7), and missed the whole point of the Law in the first place: to reveal people’s inability and point to Christ (John 5).

Any kind of view that makes Jesus into a 24/7 promoter of merely “ha ha, everything you thought you knew is wrong” not only one-dimensionalizes His nature and His main mission — to die for the sins of His people — but exalts Self As Savior, rather than Himself as Savior.

One Body, many members, all under one High Priest

In what instances do you see the artist attempting to usurp the pastor’s role?

Webb’s interview, linked above, seems to be the most recent. I recognize that not everything can be said in an interview, and any interviewer might edit other good things that were said. But his “priesthood of artists”-sounding ideas supersede any Biblical understanding of the equal “priesthood” of all believers (though with different gifts and roles), under the final High Priest (Christ Himself — cf. 1 Peter 2, the book of Hebrews).

Webb and others would likely and rightfully decry the traditional belief in some spiritual caste system, as if the pastors/priests/clergy/“second blessing” Christians/whatever are on one level, and the “laypersons” or less-spiritual Christians are on another. Without dismissing the Biblical role of overseers and elders (1 Timothy 3), that is an un-Biblical and hurtful notion.

Though I want to be fair here, isn’t Webb simply setting himself up, even if by accident, as some kind of just-slightly-higher-“priest” because he’s an Artist? It is not just him as an artist who has a “responsibility to think long and hard about things” and “give [people] a jumping off point for subject matter that might be too tangled for most people in the busyness of their daily lives.” This smacks of a kind of spiritual-elitism, in the guise of humility. All Christians are called to such tasks, to glorify God and help us grow to be like Him. And it is elders and overseers, not artists, who are called to special — not higher — jobs, in helping guide other Christians to Him.

If Webb is serious about wanting to point people to “tangled” and tricky truths, he’d best do it in the context of what the Bible does say: all believers are “priests” under Christ as the ultimate High Priest, with different roles and spiritual gifts, and that includes church overseers and pastors who are especially charged in Scripture to teach the Word. No such charge is directly given in Scripture to some “priesthood of artists,” though sometimes I’d like to think otherwise!

However, I do not mean to say Artists — including writers such as myself! — are less spiritual, charged with less, or not included in the concept of spiritual gifts. But we need not over-elevate ourselves in overreaction to the equally wrong ways churches have often ignored artists (if they can’t pragmatically Bring In Visitors, that is!). And any writer/musician/whatever who criticizes the Church, because there is certainly much to fault, but who overcorrects against un-Biblical beliefs and behavior with more of the same in opposite directions, just adds to the problem. He fails to honor and love Christ and His Church through God’s gifts of creativity and imitating Him.

This may be the only hip-hop album whose back cover quotes C.S. Lewis. (And track 6 is an actual hip-hopped allegorical fairy tale.)

Shai Linne, a hip-hop artist, had a great message at Capitol Hill Baptist Church a few weeks ago (download the MP3) about honoring God through art — art that is both for the Church, meant specifically to edify believers, and from the Church to proclaim Christ to non-Christians (though of course there can be overlap between the two). In response to at least one question during the Q and A portion, Linne’s strong recommendation was that artists, like people in any other field, need to be committed to a local Gospel-emphasizing church just like anyone else, to be taught and to teach, to be accountable in love to one another and grow in love and holiness.

So ultimately the question of how Christian writers/artists ought to interact with the Church fits within the broader question of how the Church should edify and work with any believer with any kind of Biblically permissible vocation. Artists aren’t “worth” more to the Kingdom, or less, than any other Christian with another calling, any more than elders/pastors/clergy.

In the interest of a prelude, before Christmas I wrote a piece called Inherently Religious, in which I argued that some events and symbolism are by nature religious, and, therefore, they cannot properly be used in any other way – thus, to secularize Christmas is to make Christmas not exist. In its place we have the deification of Saint Nick – poor god as he may be.

I offer that entry as something as a reference point so this one won’t seem totally off the wall.  For those who don’t know or remember, I’m a late-comer to this entire genre. It’s become something of a comfort to me, because the speculative genre allows me to stand in the doorway between the spirit world and the flesh world and peer at both, lift the veil and gaze in wonder at the greater reality that surpasses our mortal senses. That’s the draw, for me. Not so much aliens or elves as much as making tangible that which is intangible–that which is no less real but just beyond my ability to hear, see, touch, and taste.

Striking, really.

So I find it a little odd when I see the speculative crowd getting hammered…for speculating. Maybe I’m an overeager audience, or simply undaunted by halftruths in fiction, or care more about the treatment of a concept than the concept itself, but I can’t help but wonder: Shouldn’t our genre, the speculative genre, be the safest place in the world to explore every possible “what if”?

What-if games are dangerous, to be certain. It’s a fine line between exploring the thing that isn’t and promoting it. But of all people, spec-fic  writers should be unafraid to treat the dangerous questions.

For instance, I really don’t think people really realize how good we’ve got it, how much worse things could be. The guy who asks “How could a good God let X happen?” clearly doesn’t understand the nature and character of God.  And in this culture of illustrations and visual learning, it may behoove us to  engage the ramifications of such a question. How different would the world look if God were malicious? What would he be like? What would life on earth be like? Or what if he weren’t completely sovereign; or what if he were a tyrant? What if he didn’t know the future?

What if he carelessly left us to our own devices, the whole lot of this human race? (Amplify Bruce Almighty by about 6 billion and that might be a start.)

What if.

They wouldn’t be pretty books, that’s for certain.  Yes, I very much prefer God’s character drawn as accurately as possible or left off the table. But what I’m suggesting is that  part of being made in the image of God is that we still have something of his thumb print left on our souls.

As a result, unless our consciences are seared, something in us recoils against injustice and oppression–even if we only recognize it when we’re the victims.  And either we reject it or embrace it as a weapon to dominate.

I can’t help but think that a dark world with a cruel god would be a morbid one indeed. Truly Heaven would have become Hell.

Like I said, my former entry contains the frame of reference. In it, I surmised that Santa was, in effect, the “god” of various Christmas movies.  (For those who didn’t like my poke at Elf – please note that really does mean we should all strive to be Buddy: A true man of faith  and  an evangelist who comes back with converts. Of course, it also means that the Naughty List is the equivalent of Hellfire and Damnation. ) A deistic, karma-based religion, but hey.  Flip it around and you’ve got a very real idea of what the world would be like if God were little more than something out of someone’s pantheon  and in the end it was up to us to get back in his good graces. On the Nice List.

Makes me think of a song a friend of mine wrote:

Good people

Die every day

Some did not

Find their way

So close

And yet so far

So close

But no cigar

Went to church

All the time

Never did

Commit a crime

Had no time

To kneel and pray

Put it off

For another day

Another day may never come do not count on your good deeds

Because no one is perfect and no one is worthy

Do not think that you can slip on by

Let me tell you the reason why

Hell is for good people just like me

My sin nailed God’s son upon the tree

Hell is for good people just like you

And all who said one thing untrue

Helped people

All the time

Gave money

To the blind

Went to church

Twice a year

You said you listened

But did you hear?

For God so loved the world that He gave his one and only son

He hung upon the cross and bled for all your sins / every one

He rose again on the third day

So that you might; you might be saved … because

Hell is for good people….

[Hell is For Good People © 2005 Midiboy Music

Music / Lyrics: Gregg Hart]

Speculate what God is not, in other words.  Imagine the world as it isn’t.

I think on some level there has to be some separation between what the author believes and what the characters believe. I don’t, for instance, believe that if I don’t pray every three hours God will kick me out of heaven. I have a character who does, though. I don’t believe we lose our salvation, but I have a character who is convinced that if he commits one sin he’s out – forever. And that belief is never challenged. I’m sure someone will point out to me that that isn’t true. I suppose I should set up a canned response that says, “I know.” 0=)

It’s just a thought. I know many who won’t write certain things because they’re worried about promoting heresy, but I think unless those things are adequately explored, people are less likely to understand why those things are false.

OK, it’s actually late afternoon here, but it is time for me to write my review of The Voyage of the Dawn Treader, so I used a little chronometric license 😉 .

I went to see the latest version—I say latest because I understand some years ago the BBC produced a movie-length rendition of the third book in C. S. Lewis’s Narnia series—a week ago and have had time to mull over what I want to say.

First, in my list of 2010 favorites, I have to bump Dawn Treader from the number two spot in movies to number three. In its place I’m putting Tangled.

Now on to the actual review.

As a story. The friend I saw Dawn Treader with loved the movie. She, who had not read the book, thought it was the best of the three Narnia movies.

I thought it had suspense building to a climax, a touching ending, believable character development, adventure. I did not find the antagonist to be a sufficient foe, especially since the protagonists had no goal. Yes, Prince Caspian had a goal, but Edmund and Lucy didn’t have a specific goal. That weakened the story, I think.

As a movie adaptation. The boy who played Eustace Scrubbs was brilliant, and Reepicheep was every bit the hit he was in the book. I truly enjoyed both characters.

As so many others have said, I was left baffled as to why some of the scenes in the book were compressed and truncated, when developing them to their fullest would have made the movie much more interesting. The dangers of each island were barely revealed before they were solved. More please! was my response at every turn.

Also, I couldn’t help wondering why there weren’t more Narnians on board the Dawn Treader. It seemed to be mostly a group of men and a couple talking animals. No dwarfs. Perhaps I’m wrong to expect a more eclectic crew. I’ll have to pull out my copy of the book and see.

As a Christian work. Clearly the movie is not a Christian work, nor should viewers have expected it to be so. C. S. Lewis wrote fantasy, and we Christians recognized the truth he incorporated in his stories. Sadly, those coming to the books from a different worldview will miss some, if not all, of the parts that point to Christ. And that includes those who made the movie. True to form, they veered from the heart of Narnia in a variety of places. But they maintained what I consider to be the most crucial elements—Eustace’s change from dragon to boy and Aslan’s explanation that the children must learn to know him in their world by his other name. Those were well done and not downplayed at all.

Rant alert: Even if the movie makers had been faithful to the story, viewers should watch with a critical eye and measure the story with the Bible, not C. S. Lewis’s book. We Christians are too quick to give our stamp of approval to something that carries the “right” brand. Is it Christian? All right then, we can watch that movie, read that book, and put our powers of discernment away.

I find that to be a position setting a person up to believe false teaching.

I’ll use The Shack as an example. While many people loved the book because it gave them a greater understanding of God’s love and forgiveness, they may not have realized that it also exposed them to Paul Young’s ideas about universal salvation. Why? Because they let their guards down since they’d been told the book was a Christian work.

Labels, good or bad, should not do our thinking for us. We need to read and evaluate each work on its own, using the Bible as the standard by which we measure the truth it contains.

Conclusion. See The Voyage of the Dawn Treader. Then see it again. More importantly, buy the book, read it aloud to someone you love, give it away and buy it again. Talk about the story. Compare it to what the Bible says about us and about God. And finally, cheer on the movie makers so that they will make the next one. These fantasies need to be out in our culture. They need to be stories Christians and non-Christians alike know and talk about. (And pray that the movie-makers get the next one right! 😀 )