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Let’s Talk About Race and Racism: Structual Inequalities

In spite of disagreement with Critical Race Theory, this post does see some “structural inequality” in the USA. Which relates to worldbuilding…
Travis Perry on Oct 22, 2020 · Series: Let's Talk About Race and Racism
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Reader of this series, if you’ve been following from the beginning I hope you are able to perceive the tensions that make this topic difficult. On the one hand, a certain set of critics have accused me of “whitewashing” events to deny actual racism. On the other hand, I’ve had other critics rip into me in the comments section of social media sites where this has been posted for “falsely” characterizing the US Constitution as having an almost-hidden racial element (in part four of this series) and have been accused of pandering to liberals and have been called “antinomian.” The path to truth does not include pandering to either the die-hard defenders of America or those who believe the term “structural white supremacy” is essentially fair and not exaggerated in any way. The task of explaining what I believe are the lingering effects of past legalized racism requires building the case carefully, step by step. Today is the moment to talk about what I’m calling “structural inequality.”

The use of the term is in fact my take on something Critical Race Theory says, but those of you who are socially conservative, please don’t roll your eyes and turn away from this article because I am admitting I examined the claims of CRT and while I find I disagree in many essential points, yet I do not find all things Critical Race Theorists say totally incorrect. Again, please don’t walk away because I said that. I am not a “libtard” and am not in general an apologist for the Left. Nor am I turning Left that I can see. Hear out the case I’m making here, please.

By the way, this post is on a site dedicated to speculative fiction and someone may rightly ask how I can justify being so off-topic for the site. To which I would say this topic can be thought of as an exercise in world-building. Perhaps, after reading about structual inequality, authors may be inspired to create fictional societies in which this type of inquality is highlighted. Or non-existent. Or presented with a unique twist based on aliens or fantasy races (more on this at the end).

“Structural Racism” Versus “Structural Inequality”

Critical Race Theory talks about “structural racism” or more recently “structural white supremacy” as a means to describe society is supposedly structured in a way to promote the success of white people. Derrick Bell, one of the founders of CRT, especially believed the legal system is structured in favor of white people. This is a point where I generally disagree, because to pick out just one example, while I can agree that black jurors have historically been treated with less respect that white jurors, which has been a genuine problem stemming from racism, that does not mean that the system of trial by jury itself is designed either deliberately or accidentally for the purpose of favoring white people.

While I disagree with the broad characterization that the entire American justice system is intertwined with racism, I do agree certain particular laws have had elements that wound up having an unequal racial element, whether deliberate or not. For example, cocaine started being sold in a new crystalized form in the 1980s known as “crack,” a form of consuming cocaine that was especially popular in poor areas in inner cities, often in black neighborhoods. Lawmakers passed hard laws reacting to the wave of rising crack addition and wound up punishing crack possession much more harshly than regular cocaine often favored by wealthy, mostly white addicts. But if we could get in a time machine and ask people passing such laws why they did so in that time period, they probably would say they were trying to protect black communities rather than trying to hypocritcally imprison blacks while giving white cocaine addicts the proverbial slap on the wrist.

But the intent doesn’t matter as much as the effect–the same substance, cocaine, was treated inequally in a manner with a racial element. In this particular case, the law was in fact unequal. However, I would say the vast majority of US laws are not unequal in ways that impact people according to race, as per the claims of “structural racism.”

Generally people seeking to prove the widespread existence of structural racism pull out statistics that show differing outcomes according to race. That the loosely-used term “persons of color” (or POCs) are more likely to live in povery, drop out of school, receive stiff penalties for crimes, be in federal lockup, etc.

It’s important that I say “loosely-used” term POC because there’s some “no true Scotsman” logic applied to who is considered a POC. Asians are the wealthiest ethnic group in America per person, significantly wealthier than white Americans on average, South Asians in particular. So when talking poverty, Asians are not included in the category of POC. However, when talking historic racism, they are included. Sometimes they are also included in the discussion of income inequality, which is the focus of a CNN article I’m linking here. But in short, the Critical Race Theorists are not honestly answering the question of why it is Asians can succeed so well if the United States is a nation with a structural bias in favor of white people and white people alone.

However, let’s not let the general success of Asian Americans get our eyes off my point here. Does the United States have what I am calling “structural inequality”? That is, are there laws and practices of our nation that we all can plainly observe which have the effect of making it difficult for people in poverty to get out of poverty? Yes, there are some.

“Structural Inequality”–Examples of Laws or Practices That Impact the Poor Differently than the Rich

Fines:

A general example of a law with unequal impact is any fine in a fixed dollar amount. For example, a fine of five hundred dollars for burning leaves without a permit (a fine I’ve received) can be devastating if you are poor. You might have to take out a loan to pay it–though if you are unwilling to take out a loan, you might try skipping your date in court and hope the system forgets about you. In fact, the legal system does have other priorities and you will be ignored for your fine–unless you are stopped by the police for something else, in which case your failure to show up in court will have been converted to a warrant for your arrest. You may be given an opportunity to pay your fine then, but if you can’t, you will be jailed until your fine is considered paid off.

Note I have not ever been jailed for deciding not to pay a fine. I was jailed for a ticket for expired license plates that I had actually paid off but a mistake in the system did not record my payment…

But I have received fines I had a hard time paying and I am aware of other people without much money who decided to take their chances. We realize right off that no wealthy person or even middle class person would ever be put in jail for not paying a fine (unless they were insane). Only poor people wind up going to jail for fines that for middle class people are a nuisance and for wealthy people are laughable.

Loans and the Credit System:

In my previous example, I mentioned getting a fine of $500. A person living in poverty in the United States is likely to live paycheck to paycheck. That is, when the needs or wants a person has exceeds the amount of money he or she makes, the tendency is strong to spend all you have the moment you get it. True, many poor people spend irresponsibly, a point I will talk about again in a bit. But that isn’t always the case. Let’s think in particular of someone who once had a higher-paying job and lost it. Who now is saddled with bills he or she once could pay, but now can’t. Even responsibly paying bills (as opposed to frivolous spending) can easily result in a person spending his or her entire paycheck, with nothing left over.

When you have an unexpected need for cash and don’t have it, what do you do? Wealthy people will have the money or property to sell–or if we are talking about the need for capital that wealthy people may have, they can even launch a corporation and sell stocks if they can persuade people to buy (getting money for business ventures is why the stock market was invented). Middle class people probably have some money in savings, but if they don’t, they have a credit card they can use or get a bank loan, making use of their good credit rating (which most will have).

But what if you don’t have good credit? Which is a situation that will describe most but not all people below the poverty line. Is there any way to get a loan with bad credit?

Why yes there is–pay day lenders, who will give a loan to cover you based on your regular paychecks. Or car title lenders, who will take the title of your car for a loan. Or other lenders along these lines, some of whom promise to help you improve your credit, will indeed loan money to people with bad credit. With a catch…a catch of as much as 300 percent interest.

Of course, taking out a shoddy loan is a great way to improve your credit…er, actually, not really. Chances are, you will struggle to make all your payments and your credit will either get worse or not change much at all.

By the way, are the people lending money to people with low credit scores turning a profit? Why yes they are–people familiar with the 2008 housing crisis may know that during a time of a booming economy a huge number of loans were given out on houses at high interest rates to people with low credit scores…and with a bit of economic downturn, people couldn’t make payments and the entire system collapsed. The lenders lost money. The US Federal government bailed out the banks…the wealthy executives who lent so much money in a risky way may have lost their jobs (though most did not), but were never fined or punished in any way that affected their personal wealth. As opposed to poor people trying to get a home via a high-interest “subprime” loan, who got nothing. And as opposed to middle class people, who suffered during the economic downturn.

But the subprime lenders never went away. Sure, they aren’t doing home loans anymore, but they do all kinds of other loans, all the time. An article from 2018 says subprime lenders lent out 345 billion dollars in 2017. The article’s focus is on how big banks are lending to the lenders making money off these loans, with the idea this might not be a smart move for the big banks, because if the economy crashes, they may lose their money. But don’t let that distract you from the truth that as of 2018, 345 billion dollars were loaned at high interest to people paying back the loans often enough to justify continuing to lend the money.

“But wait, the credit system is good, it encourages good behavior,” a reader may reply. I’m not saying it doesn’t, but why do so many places in the USA allow loans at such mind-bogglingly high interest rates? (Foreign readers: US states have the main control over lending laws.) Poor people will turn to the lenders in times of crisis, we know that, and pay enough to keep the high interest loan system going, we know that. But the entire system will extract more money from them than they can afford and will tend to keep them poor. I’m calling that “systemic inequality,” because laws could make subprime lending illegal, but do not.

Food:

How could food have “systemic inequality?” Well, in the past of farming, what people could eat was always limited by what the soil and climate would produce where they lived. And by what transportation could realistically bring from nearby areas. Most people ate locally because it was their only choice, not out of some early sense of environmentalism.

But there’s been a centuries-long change starting with the importation of spices, then sugar, then practically everything. Food has become an international market driven by profit. Profit isn’t bad per se, but the market produces most what people demand most. Demand for sugar has been high for centuries…meaning more sugar is produced…making sugar cheaper.

A number of historical developments made the high-sugar, high-fat snacks in your local grocery store (in most of the USA) cost far less than the same weight of healthy food. It’s not a conspiracy. However, who is more likely to buy high calorie, cheap food? A person with less money, right? Also a person with less money to spend on entertainment–and a chocolatey snack cake can be like a little party in your mouth…

But that cheap food, fine in moderation for most people, winds up costing in the long term, in health costs. In diabetes and other weight-related conditions. Which disproportionately impact those who are relatively poor in the United States.

Could laws do something about this, by maybe taxing junk food in the way cigarettes are taxed? Yes, this is possible, but not how things are now.

GMOs:

Let me bring up a separate food issue that some people will see as more important than I see it (but it’s worth mentioning anyway)–did you know that patent law favors farmers producing Genetically Modified Organisms (GMOs) over people farming natural foods? To simplify a bit, that’s because if a GMO is found in the crops of someone who didn’t pay for it, the law assumes the person who didn’t pay stole it…yet the genes of a GMO can propagate themselves naturally, as can the genes of other living things. So having GMO DNA in a farmer’s crops can totally happen by accident. But US law will generally rule in favor of the copyright holder of the GMO.

This has the effect of promoting GMOs and making them cheaper (note European laws and the laws of some other countries are different in this regard). But if food derived from GMOs is cheaper, who is going to eat more of it? Poor people or wealthy people? Poor people, of course.

Note I don’t think all GMOs are bad, unlike some people. But there’s certainly a risk involved in genetic experimentation. And is there some inequality as to on whom the risks of GMOs fall? Do poor people eat more GMOs than wealthy people? Yes.

Again, this isn’t a conspiracy. But it is a part of our system in the United States and could be changed if we choose to change it. And it has unequal effects, impacting those who are relatively poor worse than those who are wealthier.

Parenting:

So some of the things I’m talking about amount to decisions people make. Just because you are poor doesn’t mean you have to eat GMOs, or you will run the risk of not getting caught on a fine you couldn’t pay, or you’ll take out a high-interest loan. But don’t people generally make good decisions when taught to make good decisions? And who is going to model moderation for a kid growing up in America? Who is going to say you can’t make a meal from the snack aisle, or you should be careful about GMOs? Or you better save some money for a “rainy day,” even if you’re broke? Or you’d better be super-careful not to break any laws if you can’t pay the fines?

Parents, right? That’s what parents do. In particular, fathers.

I don’t want to make any ardent supporters of mothers or single mothers angry here. Note my parents divorced when I was nine and my mom was a single mother for the second half of my growing up years. I love my mother–but she had difficulties raising us alone. Difficulties that impacted me growing up. And my two sisters.

Statistics show that what we can fairly call a “traditional marriage” is good for children. That coming from a two parent home is a big predictor of a child’s success in life (here’s one site that makes this case). That childen, even those born in relative poverty, do better in the future with a mother and father than just a mother…or father (though father-led households do better on average than mother-led ones according to stats).

But here’s the thing–people who grew up in families who modeled a good marriage are more likely to get married themselves and stay married. Or in mirror image, sons who grow up with a single mother don’t usually get married and if they do, they usually wind up divorced. That is, the cycle of single parenthood is self-perpetuating. One generation tends to produce the same results in the next. Not in all cases, but generally. Making poverty tend to be generational.

Felons:

Not only is poverty generational, criminality tends to be generational. If dad was a felon, the son is much more likely to be a felon, not because of genetics, but because of social contacts and upbringing. Liked is an Atlantic article from 2018 that makes this case–that specifically shows how breaking social contacts with friends and relatives who are felons can help felons.

And how does our society, the United States, help a person who has committed a felony to break the cycle of crime and get a regular job? Is it easy to find regular employment in the USA if you’ve been convicted of a felony? Does the law move a person into a new place and make getting a fresh start easy? In general, no.

Generational Wealth:

In contrast, how common is it for someone to gain advantage in life from someone in your family helping you? Pretty common. For Donald Trump, in his own telling of his personal story, that was a “small” 1 million dollar loan from his father. For me, it was my dad buying me an airplane ticket for me once. For some, it might be no more than 5 dollars.

Still, if your family could leave you something, an heirloom of some sort–a house or property–for many people, that’s the start of them building their own personal wealth. If you have something to pass on, then you can help the next generation do better than they otherwise would. But if you have nothing to pass on…then it’s more likely the next generation won’t have anything to pass on, either.

Why Does Generational Poverty Afflict Some People of Color More?

Space does not allow me to list all the things that tend to impact poor people more than middle class or wealthy people. Most of those things have nothing to do with race, but they do mean there’s a general tendency for poor people to have a hard time getting out of poverty. If you are raised in a family where all has gone wrong, it’s hard to get out.

I don’t think I need to dive deep into the pages of history, though I could in detail, to show how past racism affected black people and Native Americans in particular. When your ancestors came here in chains or had their entire way of life taken away at gunpoint, it’s a no-brainer that all your people started out in poverty. That the Europeans who immigrated to America usually had at least some property before they came. That their situation started out differently.

In contrast to other POCs, many Asians have come to the United States specifically for the purpose of working in businesses and universities. They may not have come with much in terms of wealth, but many came because of a high degree of talent and earned high levels of education and have wound up with great deal of wealth. Their success shows that the American system is not one of unremitting white supremacy–because we know for certain Asians have been impacted by historic and current racism. But that racism has not been enough to prevent them from finding success.

However, for people who entered the U.S. economic system mired in poverty from the beginning, a number of “structures” we can call them–yes, I’m borrowing the idea of “structures” from CRT, because they happen to have noticed something correctly–tend to keep people poor.

Dear readers, I submit to you that past racism that caused poverty among all members of some groups of “persons of color,” coupled with “structures” that tend to keep poor people poor, is the primary reason the outcomes for races are different from one another in the United States of America. Current racism is not the primary cause.

Not that current racism doesn’t rear its head in various ways–not that current racism doesn’t need to be dealt with–but it isn’t modern racism that has made such a split in outcomes in America. It’s past racism, historic racism–with overt discrimination–plus current structural inequality that tends to keep poor people poor. That’s the reason we see poverty rates higher in black America and among Native Americans than we do in white America and among Asian Americans. (Latinos are often lumped in with African Americans but in fact there are whole groups of both wealthy and poor Latinos–it depends in part on what country they came from, which is an interesting topic but too much for this post.)

Worldbuilding

So I’ve said a lot on this topic now, in a forum really dedicated to something else, to speculative fiction, especially fantasy and science fiction. For fans of speculative fiction, note how stories can reflect assumptions about how laws and rules can reinforce inequality.

But for creators of stories, you have the opportunity in worlds to you build to show the rules of a society, even if meant to be equal, can have an unequal impact. To use an obvious example, let’s say there was a tax on height–over a certain size the law may consider someone more likely to break a doorway or ceiling. But the law clearly would impact giants and tall humans more than dwarves or hobbits.

Or more subtly, let’s say a story involved loans with detailed warnings on high interest written out–in elvish, which naturally for the most part only elves can read. Or in binary code, which only the robots could easily read. Or other examples along these lines.

Hand drawing red dividing line separating groups of people. Credit: Getty Images/Ikon Images

Conclusion

There are many particular issues this post did not address. But I think structural inequality that is not specifically racial is much more significant than supposed systemic racism–which in fact may exist in some cases, but it does not dominate our whole society. Adopting such an understanding helps us see why Asians are the wealthiest ethnic group, even though discriminated against. And why, once mired in poverty and the criminal justice system, it isn’t easy for whole populations to suddenly leap to be statistically the same as the majority.

Note this post only hinted at ways I think laws could be different to help even out structural inequalities. That doesn’t mean Socialism–in fact, I am not in favor of Socialism. But wise laws should make it easier to get out of poverty, not harder. Which is not a Libertarian position to be sure, but again, not Socialism. A later post may talk more about how I think U.S. laws could do better to help people born into poverty find a way to earn a better living.

But what are your thoughts on this topic? Please make your thoughts known in the comments below.

‘Weaker Brothers’ Shouldn’t Boss Christians About Music or Fantasy

Biblical teaching and strong believes’ examples, rather than people vulnerable to temptation, should guide Christians’ enjoyment of good gifts.
E. Stephen Burnett on Oct 20, 2020
25 comments

When I was a child, Christian weaker brothers1 had authority to boss you about all kinds of things.

By weaker brothers, I mean Christians who, by their own admission, were vulnerable to certain temptations.2

In one case, Christian leaders held up one specific weaker brother boss: a (possibly apocryphal) witch doctor, and/or former African tribal worshiper, who had converted to Christianity. One version of this anecdote was printed in a booklet from a (nastily legalistic) outfit called the “Institute in Basic Life Principles” (IBLP). The booklet’s title: “Ten Scriptural Reasons Why the ‘Rock Beat’ Is Evil in Any Form” (underline in original).

In April 1990, a Christian from Zimbabwe, Africa, arrived for his first visit to the United States. He is a native missionary under the Awana Youth Association. When he turned on a Christian radio station and listened to the music, he was shocked. Here is his report:

“I am very sensitive to the beat in music, because when I was a boy, I played the drums in our village worship rituals. The beat that I played on the drum was to get the demon spirits into the people.

“When I became a Christian, I rejected this kind of beat because I realized how damaging it was.

“When I turned on a Christian radio station in the United States, I was shocked. The same beat that I used to play to call up the evil spirits is in the music I heard on the Christian station.”

— Stephen Maphosah, Zimbabwe, Africa34

It wasn’t long before I realized the absurdity of this story:

Hey. Who put the witch doctor in charge of Christian moral practice?

This goes double if you heard, as I did, that the (apocryphal?) witch doctor was actually a new convert to Christianity:

With all due respect, why should new converts be the boss of Christian moral practice?

Scripture, in fact, specifically warns against letting a new convert become a church overseer. Paul says that if we do that, “he may become puffed up with conceit and fall into the condemnation of the devil.”5

But what if the witch doctor wasn’t a new convert? What if the account is true?

Then it still makes little sense for Christians to let him become a music boss:

  • By all versions of the account I heard, the witch doctor wasn’t even trying to boss. He only made the observation about the music similarity. And/or a concern that it sounded like rhythms he and his witch-doctor friends used to try to summon spirits. It was someone else who later “weaponized” his words, as if they marked universal concern for all Christians.
  • By the account’s own terms, the witch doctor had his own personal history with similar music. In his past, he had used certain sounds or rhythms alongside sinful behavior. In the present, he couldn’t help making the association. His story doesn’t apply to everyone else.
  • Even if his story did apply to others, this does not overrule the path that God can redeem pagan practices and things—starting with us.
  • The person’s opinions are not the same as revealed Scripture.

Listen to our new Fantastical Truth podcast episode: Should Christians Enjoy Fantasy with Fictional Magic? Part 2

https://media.blubrry.com/fantasticaltruth/content.blubrry.com/fantasticaltruth/FT038-Fictional-Magic-2.mp3

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

But Christians keep letting weaker brothers boss them about things.

Plenty of Christians keep going along with this weird tendency. They keep entrusting “weaker brothers” with unique authority over particular practices. Those relate to music, as we’ve seen. But they also related to things like food and popular culture:

What sorts of foods can we eat or avoid?

Let’s all listen to a person who has terrible food allergies, and/or terrible stories about what happened to her when she consumed a certain thing.

What kinds of fantasy stories can we enjoy or avoid?

Let’s all listen to a person who has a terrible backstory about being drawn into the occult and Satanism.

Are certain types of Christian music acceptable or too worldly?

Let’s all listen to a person who has a terrible backstory about being drawn into the occult and Satanism.

That last one is a particularly bizarre trend. Some Christians, historically, keep deciding to let Satan-worshipers be the best authority on the Devil’s powers and dangers. Sometimes it doesn’t even matter whether the Satan-worshiper has since received the gospel. I have heard Christians cite (apocryphal, anecdotal, or actual) current New Age or pagan teachers as authorities about spiritual warfare.

Shouldn’t we follow strong Christians instead?

The apostle Paul doesn’t venerate weaker brothers the way some Christians have.

He doesn’t say they’re strong. He says they’re weak. Weak means not strong. It means, “These are the people you should help.” It does not mean, “These are the people who have the inside view, so you should follow whatever standard they must follow.”

In fact, the very truth that Paul speaks openly about weaker brothers means he wants all the church, strong and weak alike, to adopt these categories.

Paul does not want stronger people to meet together and whisper about how legalistic the weaker brothers are. He doesn’t want weaker brothers to gather secretly and whisper about how the others keep compromising with the world. Instead, Paul wants the issues openly discussed. After reading his letters (probably publicly!) to the Roman or Corinthian church, everybody could meet together. They could figure out their strengths and weaknesses.

“Ah yes. I grew up in this particular Athenian cult. I can’t go near market so-and-so without feeling a compulsion to rejoin my old people.”

“Fascinating! I never have that issue. So I suppose if you need anything in that market, I could head out there for you.”

Stronger brothers and sisters have rarely if ever been tempted to sin by particular foods, holidays, popular culture, or more. Or they were once tempted to these sins, but through Scripture study, prayer, and hard holiness work, have achieved victory over those sinful temptations.

Weaker brothers, precisely because they’re weaker, don’t (yet?) have such victory. So they require special care.

By default, Christians should put the stronger believers in positions of authority. Because they’re, you know, stronger.

By default, Christians should not put the weaker brothers in positions of authority. Because they are weaker.6

  1. And sisters. As my study Bible is fond of pointing out, the Greek term adelphoi, translated brothers, is a catch-all term that refers to men and women. ↩
  2. The phrase comes from Romans 14. Here, the apostle Paul urges Christians to be welcoming and sensitive to concerns of “the one who is weak in faith” (verse 1). See also 1 Corinthians 8–10. Here, Paul refers to “the weak” (1 Corinthians 8:9). Weaker brothers are not following a higher standard of holiness. They are weak precisely because they cannot help associating some behavior with sin—possibly because of their own background. ↩
  3. I’ve copied the wording from this website. However, it credits only “guest article.” It does not give a date and does not mention the original source: the IBLP booklet “Ten Scriptural Reasons Why the ‘Rock Beat’ Is Evil in Any Form.” ↩
  4. One commentator provides another version of the “witch doctor” story on the Recovering Grace website: “Bill (that is, disgraced IBLP legalistic seminar leader Bill Gothard) repeated (sic) stated in his seminars that the origin of rock music was from African voodoo type of music. He usually gave the story of an African witch doctor that was visiting and heard ‘rock music’ and stated that this was the kind of music that the former witch doctor used in his practice of witchcraft and voodoo. He (Gothard) had serial variations of this story that he used in the seminars.” Source: Comment dated June 8, 2015, from “rob war,” in response to “The Phony Consequences of Rock Music,” RecoveringGrace.org, Nov. 14, 2011. ↩
  5. 1 Timothy 3:6. ↩
  6. This article has been edited from its original version. In my original series, I continued to explore the one area where some “weaker brothers” are gaining power: social justice issues. Of course, this takes us further beyond the fantasy issues. If you want that series, here are the original links:

    Series: Weaker Brothers Shouldn’t Boss Christians

    1. Weaker Brothers Shouldn’t Boss Christians about Music, Food, or Fantasy
    2. How Weaker Brothers May Begin to Boss Christians about Social Justice Issues
    3. Weaker Brothers Shouldn’t Boss Christians about Social Justice Work . ↩

Four Replies to ‘Scary’ Questions that Led Searchers to Speculative Faith

“What does God think of scary stories”? “Christian spells”? “Ted Dekker controversy”? “Consequences of Deuteronomy 18:10–12”?
E. Stephen Burnett on Oct 14, 2020
8 comments

We’re in between Wednesday writers at SpecFaith. Earlier this year, Mark Carver quietly stepped out to soft-reboot, in part because of pandemic. Earlier this month, Shannon McDermott also stepped back, at least for now, and likely for similar reasons.

So for today, you’ve got me. I thought I’d make a “filler episode” by responding to search-engine questions that led readers here.

Here are my micro-answers—at least, replying to the web queries I understood.

‘What does God think of scary stories?’

It depends on the story.

Does the story draw you closer to Christ, the embodiment and origin of all truth, beauty, and goodness?

Or does that story help push you away from Christ, perhaps into a quiet suspicion that darkness always wins and there is no hope?

Scary stories are found even in Scripture. The Fall itself (Genesis 3) is terrifying when you think of it. Before you even finish Genesis, you’ve also seen a global cataclysmic Flood, a man’s wife transmogrified into a salt pillar, and incestuous drunk-rape. Generations later, Judges 19 is a self-contained horror tale. All these true accounts can scare us, rightly, about the terrible consequences of rejecting our Creator.

‘Christian spells?’

These are not a great plan.

As we explore in this week’s podcast episode, God warns his people (then as now) against occultism. We must not try to act like “gods” in God’s world, pridefully worshiping idols and using “magical” means to control our own destinies.

That includes anti-Christian, occult practices: the usual stuff we imagine, like tarot cards, charms, crystals, and New Age whatnot.

Yet it also includes “Christian white magic“—the sorts of spiritual zone-defense Christians attempt, even as means to ward off paganism.

‘The 49th Mystic, Ted DekkerTed Dekker controversy?’

Hmm. This could mean many things.

Dekker is a fascinating figure, and I’ve enjoyed much of his fiction. My favorite of his novels is actually Blink. His Thr3e likely ranks second.

We positively reviewed his novel The 49th Mystic at Lorehaven. Yet we did include more details in the Discern section:

Soft-gnostic themes and even heterodox preaching, not just shown subtly in the story but blatantly told in an introductory author’s note and concluding detailed Scripture interpretation; plus frequent attacks on portrayals of organized religion, and a Holy Spirit–like figure prefers feminine pronouns . . .

Perhaps this is the “controversy” the web-searcher was seeking: Dekker’s growing appreciation of “mysticism,” not just as some optional path for some monks somewhere, but as an essential choice to get some kind of higher, more-enlightened spiritual life.

Mike Duran also wrote more about Dekker in 2017’s “The Dangers of Christian Mysticism.”

Apart from the mysticism concerns, Dekker seems to struggle with The Church Back Home. (That’s my catch-all term for “that religious group, faction, denomination, or local gathering that gave you a lot of trouble in your childhood or career or professional ministry.”) I understand these struggles. But when someone tries to turn them into a leadership platform, and urge people to forsake the local church—and to challenge biblical gospel teaching—that goes too far. Young Christians who struggle with the pain of legalism need to hear more.

This doesn’t mean, “Don’t read Ted Dekker’s books.” Our reviews’ Discern section is about notification, not warning! Yet always, always compare any fantastical Christian-made fiction with the greater and truer narrative of the Bible.

‘Consequences of Deut. 18:10-12?’

Here’s another perfect setup for this week’s podcast episode, Should Christians Enjoy Fantasy with Fictional Magic? Part 1.

https://media.blubrry.com/fantasticaltruth/content.blubrry.com/fantasticaltruth/FT037-Fictional-Magic-1.mp3

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

From the Scripture text, Deuteronomy 18:10–12:

There shall not be found among you anyone who burns his son or his daughter as an offering, anyone who practices divination or tells fortunes or interprets omens, or a sorcerer or a charmer or a medium or a necromancer or one who inquires of the dead, for whoever does these things is an abomination to the LORD. And because of these abominations the LORD your God is driving them out before you.

From the show notes:

Scripture warns against real occult practices that result from idolatry.

  • For them: All these are false and blasphemous ways to seek God’s future.
  • Divination: attempting to foretell the future. Fortune-telling: the same.
  • Interpreting omens, sorcery, charming, summoning the dead: the same.
  • If you want to know futures, you want to control reality on your own terms.
  • The chief sin here seems to be a single sin: divination, fortune-telling, control.
  • This is idolatry: you’re trying to be like God, stealing his authority from him.
  • Even if we don’t do that stuff, we struggle with idolatry. (Cf. last session.)
  • Especially in hard times, we want to know the future. We want to have power.

Notice what God doesn’t say in these passages (but do Christians say this?)

  • God does not address the issue of anything else labeled “magic.”
  • He does not answer if these pagan strategies actually work.
  • He does not talk about whether whether they summon Satan or demons.
  • Here, at least, God is not interested in these topics.
  • He only gives one motive for people: their holiness in worship for his sake.

Return next week, when I just might share three-or-so more of these, with some quick responses and resources.

How would you answer any of these questions?

‘Over the Garden Wall’ Explores and Positively Subverts Fairy-Tale Worlds

Over the Garden Wall serves an animated, autumnal treat in which unknown lands still show the defeat of evil, no matter its shape.
Elijah David · Oct 13, 2020 · 6 comments

Back in 2014, a little miniseries called Over the Garden Wall premiered on Cartoon Network.

I don’t remember exactly when I finally watched the series. Several of my friends kept raving about it and quoting it, so finally I did. 1

At first, I thought, “This is weird. I’m not sure how I feel about it.” But by the end of the tenth and final episode, I was convinced this was a new favorite. And it has been. I’ve watched it at least once every fall since then. This year (2020), we’re working on a fourth fun through since September started. (I watched it twice on my own, and my four-year-old has requested it twice.)

So, what is Over the Garden Wall?

It’s a story about two brothers, Wirt (voiced by Elijah Wood) and Greg (voiced by Collin Dean). They find themselves lost in a mysterious place called the Unknown. There they meet many characters who seem to have stepped straight out of folklore and history, from the grumpy bluebird Beatrice (voiced by Melanie Lynskey) to the strange Woodsman (voiced by Christopher Lloyd) to the fearsome Beast. As the boys try to get home, they discover many of the Unknown’s odd little communities. They learn the truth behind some of the stories they fall into.

The series takes much of its inspiration from older art and musical styles. It includes bluegrass and jazz, early animation, and vintage art.

Over the Garden Wall focuses on main themes of brotherhood, responsibility, and growth. In the first episode, the Woodsman chastises Wirt as the older brother to take responsibility for Greg’s safety. Later in the final arc, both Wirt and Greg place themselves in danger to save the other. All along, this story is focused on choosing to be responsible for those in your care and to take responsibility for your actions.

Before I go any further, I must give you a spoiler alert. I can’t talk about the themes and clever storytelling in this show without spoiling several episodes and some major characters arcs. You have been warned.

This theme also carries out in the arcs of Beatrice and the Woodsman. Beatrice spends most of the series serving as a cantankerous foil to Wirt. But midway through the series, she reveals herself to be a human cursed to take the form of a bluebird—along with her entire family. It is the restoration of her family, and the guilt of being responsible for the curse, that drives Beatrice. The Woodsman similarly is driven by his sense of guilt and penance in his work of grinding up Edelwood trees to keep lit the dark lantern, which contains his daughter’s soul.

Over the Garden Wall subverts old tropes

The series doesn’t rely on familiar beats and archetypes—or rather, it does, but only to turn them on their heads. Apart from an episode or two which are clearly modeled after old serial melodramas (like “Schoolhouse Follies”), the stories in this show tend to take familiar tropes and spin them in new directions.

Two episodes really bring this trope-spinning style of storytelling to the fore.

Episode 2, “Hard Times at the Huskin’ Bee”

In this story, a strange town of talking pumpkins seems to condemn Wirt and Greg for trespassing, only to have the sentence be community service. This work leads to them digging up a skeleton, which causes Wirt to believe they are digging their own graves, only to bring about the final twist: the town is populated by skeletons who dress themselves in pumpkins and scarecrow-like apparel.

Episode 7, “The Ringing of the Bell”

This story uses some religious and folk imagery to subvert viewers’ expectations.

In this episode, Wirt and Greg come to a cottage in the woods, where they discover a young woman named Lorna, who lives there under the care of the spooky Auntie Whispers. Using a magical bell, Auntie Whispers compels Lorna to work almost endlessly in order to prevent her from “becoming wicked.” From her bulking size to her otherworldly voice and appearance (she is voiced by Tim Curry) to her mention of people being devoured alive, Auntie Whispers is built up as an evil forest witch out of fairytale. Couple all of this with the fact that both Lorna and Auntie Whispers dress in an old-fashioned style reminiscent of Puritans, and we as an audience are apt to take Wirt’s initial view: that Auntie Whispers is evil, and her treatment of Lorna, supposedly for her own good, is wrong-minded and backward.

When Wirt and Greg are discovered by Auntie Whispers, they hide with Lorna in the pantry, locking Auntie Whispers out. Auntie Whispers warns them to open the door, or they will be doomed, for they have made Lorna wicked again.

You see, Lorna—sweet, innocent, sickly Lorna—was the monster all along. Tormented by an evil spirit, she has devoured all those who come near her after dark, save for Auntie Whispers, who knows how to use the bell to keep the spirit at bay.

Greg and Wirt flee the cottage, with Evil!Lorna in pursuit. When all seems lost, Greg shakes his frog to stop Lorna, revealing that the frog swallowed the magic bell while he and Greg were sneaking into Auntie Whispers’ room earlier. Before Greg can do more than begin his command, Wirt snatches the frog and commands the spirit to “Stop making Lorna do bad things! And also go away and never come back.”2 The spirit is undone, seemingly destroyed by Wirt’s final admonition. Lorna is freed, and she and Auntie Whispers return to caring for one another out of love rather than duty.

As I said, the writers take our expectations and flip them. There is room for love that is unconventional in its forgiveness and for appearances to be deceiving.

Despite this victory, Wirt seems to take no joy from his defeat of the evil spirit, and we move from here into series’ last stories.

Over the Garden Wall‘s last three episodes

Over these three stories, Wirt and Greg face the Beast and their own past, risking their futures both in and out of the Unknown.

With Wirt becoming more despondent, Greg dreams of a city in the clouds (animated in an early twentieth century style) that is besieged by the North Wind. After defeating the North Wind, Greg receives an offer from the Queen of Cloud City: he can go home, but he has to leave Wirt behind, because Wirt has given up hope. Greg refuses, saying he’ll find another way. He wanders off into the woods, unknowingly having agreed to go with the Beast in order to save Wirt from becoming an Edelwood tree. When Wirt realizes Greg is missing, he rushes off in search of his younger brother. He falls into a frozen pond and we are treated to a flashback that establishes how Wirt and Greg came to be lost in the Unknown, as well as explaining a lot of Wirt’s offhand comments for most of the series.

When we return to the Unknown, Wirt and Beatrice reunite and find Greg. Greg hasn’t given up hope, despite many tasks set by the Beast designed to crush his hope. But because he has been out in the cold so long, Greg isn’t doing so well, and the Edelwood is beginning to take root in him. The Woodsman confronts the Beast, who has revealed that the Edelwood trees were all once lost souls who gave up hope in his woods. When the Beast overpowers the Woodsman, he offers Wirt a choice: take up the lantern and wander like the Woodsman, or watch Greg be lost forever. Wirt almost agrees, until he questions the Beast’s obsession with keeping the lantern lit. He deduces that it is not the Woodsman’s daughter whose soul resides in the lantern, but the Beast’s. His suspicion is confirmed when he prepares to douse the lantern’s light and the Beast responds in terror. Satisfied, Wirt leaves the lantern to the Woodsman and carries Greg out of the woods. The Woodsman, angry at the Beast’s deception, blows out the lantern’s light, and the Beast vanishes.

Content and other parental concerns

The series never directly touches on religion, despite its use of religious dress with Auntie Whispers and its frequent use of death, burial, and resurrection imagery. However, the series deals with themes which resonate with the Christian worldview: the battle of light and darkness, self-sacrificial love, the defeat of evil no matter its shape, and hope that does not die.

Some of the scenes dealing with the Beast and other denizens of the Unknown (Auntie Whispers and Evil!Lorna, the Highwayman, Enoch and the denizens of Pottsfield, and “the Beast” from the first episode) may be too frightening for younger viewers. Parents will want to give this a viewing beforehand to be sure their children are ready for it.

The first time my son asked to watch it, I sat next to him, prepared to switch it off if he showed signs of distress. Despite the fact that I love this show, I know he’s still learning about how the world works, and I want to guide him as he forms his ideas of how light and dark (and by extension, God and Satan) operate in this world.

There are also scenes in Over the Garden Wall (episode 2 in particular) that imply a sort of afterlife that’s neither heaven nor hell. Some have interpreted the Unknown as a sort of Limbo, between life and death, with Pottsfield as one of several final destinations travelers may take. Turning into the Beast’s Edelwood trees is another such fate. 3 I take the view that the Unknown is like Faerie. It’s an Otherworld that sometimes intersects with ours. That means Pottsfield may be a sort of allegory for death and resurrection. But I don’t think we can hand-wave away the story’s entirety in such a fashion. Again, this is something to discuss, not just with your kids, but with anyone you enjoy dissecting the themes of popular culture with.

In the end, Over the Garden Wall is an autumnal treat that warrants a return to the Unknown, complete with discussion about its strange and spooky denizens.

If you’ve seen Over the Garden Wall, what do you think of it? Is it a favorite in your house? What do you think about the idea the whole story takes place in Limbo? And is life really as sweet as potatoes and molasses?

  1. I thrive on movie quotes and references; they’re like another language for me, so I had to check this show out just to be able to communicate properly with my friends. ↩
  2. “The Ringing of the Bell.” ↩
  3. See Jack Patrick Healy, “Symbolism of Death in ‘Over the Garden Wall’,” Aug. 2, 2016, The Odyssey Online. ↩
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We Have A Winner—2020 Spec Faith Fall Writing Challenge

Thank you all for participating, and watch for the next Spec Faith Writing Challenge.
Rebecca LuElla Miller on Oct 12, 2020 · Series: 2020 Spec Faith Fall Witing Challenge
5 comments

Congratulations to our 2020 Spec Faith Fall Writing Challenge winner:

Ann Milo.


For details about your prize, Ann, please contact me via Facebook messaging, at my personal site, or through the Spec Faith page. I also have a public Yahoo account that you can find at my personal site.

The contest really tightened and it could have gone any way, which is exciting. So congratulations to the other finalists in the writing challenge for their excellent entries: Darlene N. Bocek, Shari Branning, and John Sweeting.

Special thanks for your participation in the writing challenge, in all phases: the entries, readers in the first round who gave their thumbs up, and voters who chose the winner from our finalists.

Contests like this writing challenge are fun. The thing that continues to amaze me is how varied the stories are even though they all begin with the same first sentence. We had such a wide range again this year. That shows a lot of creativity.

For those who may have missed Ann’s winning entry, here it is again:

  • Ann Milo

Stuffing the last item of clothing into her travel bag, Octavia glanced out the window once more to be sure that no one was on the road in front of her house.

Poof! Angel appeared on her shoulder.

“Don’t go,” he whispered. “Don’t do it.”

Poof! Devil appeared next to him.

“Hey! What’re ya whispering for? She can’t hear ya!” Devil pulled out a megaphone. “GO! You should go!”

Angel covered his ears. “Pipe down!”

“WHAT?” Devil whipped around, bonking Angel with the megaphone and knocking him off Octavia’s shoulder.

Angel flapped along by the hem of Octavia’s pants.

“Ha!” cried Devil, prancing around.

Angel fluttered back up and landed on Octavia’s other shoulder. “Oh, dear! Where were we? Oh. Don’t go!”

Devil put his megaphone in Octavia’s ear. “WHY WOULD YOU LISTEN TO HIM? He’s wearing a skirt!”

“It’s called a robe,” cried Angel. “Don’t listen to him! He’s holding a fork!”

“Yes! Listen to goody two-shoes!” laughed Devil.

“Hey, where’re we going?”

Angel and Devil looked down as Octavia darted out the driveway.

“Hah! She’s getting away!” Devil hopped around, waving arms and legs as though on fire. “If you’d talked about something other than a fork, she might’ve listened to you.”

Angel leaned over. “Don’t do it.”

Octavia crossed the street.

“She did it.”

“Why’re you so evil?” Angel cried.

“Well, when I was a little devil, I fell from Heaven.”

“That’s too bad,” sighed Angel.

“Anh, shut up!”

Bump!

Devil and Angel went airborne and landed on their faces. Above Octavia’s shoulders, a scarlet banner fluttered over a covered tent reading “Charity Drive”.

“Hello!” Octavia pushed her travel bag across the counter. “Here’s my donation.”

Angel’s and Devil’s mouths dropped open like two hinges.

“Aha!” exclaimed Angel. “’When you give to the needy, don’t let your left hand know what your right hand is doing, so that your giving may be in secret.’”

– – – – –

Again, thank you all for participating, and watch for the next Spec Faith Writing Challenge.

Let’s Talk About Race and Racism: The Space Traders-Science Fiction and Critical Race Theory

The Space Traders, a science fiction short story, lays out a portion of the case for Critical Race Theory. This post responds to the story.
Travis Perry on Oct 8, 2020 · Series: Let's Talk About Race and Racism
12 comments

Critical Race Theory has come to dominate how many modern people think about race and racism. I’ve mentioned this theory before, but have only offered a partial definition. Personal time doesn’t allow me a full explanation of the origins of Critical Race Theory (CRT), even though I think CRT is an important topic worthy of discussion. But it so happens that one of the founders of CRT, Derrick Bell, crafted a science fiction story called The Space Traders intended to illustrate the plight of black people in modern America. This post is a discussion of that science fiction short story and how its backstory stemmed from a number of the ideas central to CRT. And…by the way…we are finally on a subject that’s clearly on topic for Speculative Faith–science fiction!

Why Science Fiction?

The science fiction of Derrick Bell’s story isn’t particularly complex–the “science” element amounts to advanced aliens making an unusual proposal to the human race. Most of characters–well, all characters but one–are one-dimensional. Nor would I consider the story especially well-written. That’s not really surprising, because Derrick Bell was a law professor and not a science fiction writer.

But of course science fiction is the perfect medium for illustrating an idea. Science fiction has long been a means of social commentary by imagining counter-factual situations, such as: What if we are all in a computer simulation? (the Matrix) What if genetic fitness becomes the basis of a future society? (Gattaca) What if aliens invaded us in the same way we historically invaded colonial possessions? (the War of the Worlds) Etc.

As a short story, The Space Traders, first published in 1992, has been pretty successful. It’s been featured in several anthologies and was adapted for television once upon a time. (Here’s a link to the Wikipedia article on the story and also a link to the full text of the tale should you want to read it–it’s just shy of 12,000 words long). But again, I’d say that’s because of the controversial nature of the subject of the story, rather than it’s style. (Though on the other hand, it’s not a terrible story, either. The ending is pretty powerful.)

What the alien ship might have looked like. Image copyright: The Atlantic.

The Space Traders Summarized

The central character in The Space Traders is Gleason Golightly, a conservative black man who is an economic advisor to a white Republican president. As I’ve said, he’s the only character in the story with any depth. Though the story doesn’t begin with him.

The tale starts in a near-future scenario–from the point of view of the Nineties–in which aliens mysteriously arrive on January 1st and offer the United States unlimited clean energy and vast wealth–with a catch. All the aliens want is the USA to hand over every single person in the country who identifies as black. For purposes unknown.

The tale begins on 1 January and counts up until 17 January–which in the story world is a Martin Luther King Jr holiday…and also the day the United States ushers all black citizens into the alien ship cargo holds. Irony blatantly intended.

The story says the aliens adopt a voice like the former president Ronald Reagan, which causes all white people to trust them but causes suspision in all black people in America. I’ll comment on this further down.

Action leaps to the White House and of course the conservative cabinet is all for making this exchange. After all, in this story world, their conservative policies have wrecked the environment and bankrupt the country–they despirately need the alien technology and wealth to rescue the country from its dire straits. (I won’t comment on this further, but yeah this bit of story backdrop is more than a bit over-the-top-politically-liberal.)

But they want to hear from their token black economics advisor–the story directly calls him “token” (and mentions black people see this character as an “Uncle Tom”). The concerns of the cabinet being: “How can we sell this exchange to the public?” and “How can we justify our actions?” and “How can make this work legally?” rather than, you know, the ethics of the situation.

The story says directly that if the aliens had asked for any other sub-group of people, such as green-eyed red heads, the exchange would never have been considered for a moment. I’ll comment on this in a bit.

Golightly naturally doesn’t want the exchange to take place. The story from this point forth is about his efforts to first avert the exchange but when his efforts fall through, to save himself by escaping to Canada.

His strategy to derail the exchange is that he meets with a group of black Civil Rights leaders and attempts to persuade them they should speak out in favor of the trade. If they could only show that black people are in favor of the prospect of being hauled away by mysterious aliens, then white people would themselves wonder why black people were for it, which would be their best chance to save themselves. Because, you know, if black people want the exchange, white people won’t want to give it to them. Reverse psychology.

Golightly fails to persuade the black community leaders. They think his idea is crazy–but he despairs when they don’t listen to him.

To legally get rid of all blacks, the USA needs to enact a constitutional amendment in which the military draft is applied to black people. So all will be drafted into “service” for the good of the rest of the country. Bell mentions a few legal parallels to this, specifically stating the US Constitution itself sacrificed black people for the purpose of making the USA, so the idea the nation would do so again isn’t unthinkable.

The story spends a bit of time talking about the Liberal opposition to the amendment allowing the exchange. Part of New York City is shown to be shut down for a while due to protests led by Rabbi Abraham Specter, with the cooperation of many American Jews. The story says at one point what the Jewish motivaton is–they don’t want to be the ones stuck at the bottom of the social order to receive the full ire of angry poor whites. So they want black people to stay.

Other, non-Jewish Liberals are referred to in that thirty percent of the USA is said to be against the amendment, while seventy percent are for it. Note that the US population of African Americans is about eleven percent, so nineteen percent of the rest of America were against the exchange. The Jewish population of America is less than nineteen percent and I can’t imagine Bell missing this detail, so clearly other, non-Jewish Liberals also opposed “the Trade.” The story never says who were the other Liberals, but it does assign them a motivation: Guilt.

A scene from The Space Traders in the HBO special Cosmic Slop. Copyright HBO.

Golightly attempts to make the case early on with the cabinet that white people will be extremely afflicted with a sense of guilt after the fact if they trade off all black people for the alien tech. This doesn’t affect the cabinet, but as far as the story is concerned, guilt is the only motivator to want to help black people other than not wanting to be at the bottom of the social order yourself.

The aliens warn the United States government that they if they let black people escape to other countries, the deal will be off. The story references a few getting away, but the USA mostly blocking any escapes. The federal government promises to send a few prominent black people to other countries in exchange for their help, including Golightly and his wife, but they take back this offer in the end.

The second to last moment of the story features Golightly trying to escape to Canada but being caught by the US Secretary of the Interior, a colleague Golightly worked with and knew personally. His wife wondered if black people would have been worse off if Golightly had managed to block the legislation, because black people would be blamed for the country not receiving aliens’ benefits. The story basically leaves this comment hanging.

In the end, the aliens require all black people to strip down to a single article of clothing before boarding the ship. The story pointedly says they leave the United States in the same way their ancestors had arrived. As ship’s cargo.

The Space Traders Criticized

There’s much in this story I disagree with, but I can summarize all my objections in three points. However, Bell made one point in which I believe he was entirely right to criticize the United States. I’ll mention where I agree with him last.

Disagreement #1. According to The Space Traders, all Black People are the Same

This point isn’t secondary to the story. All black people in the United States suffer the exact same fate. The protagonist Gleason Golightly in various ways attempts to escape his fate, but in the end, being black is something he cannot escape. He is turned in and taken away, just like every other black person.

The story is just a story and is allowed to engage in hyperbole for the purpose of making a point. But I don’t think Critical Race Theorists see any hyperbole here. All black people in their view are in the same boat. Which is on the one hand ridiculous–there’s a huge difference between Oprah Winfrey and a black man who’s a fourth generation felon in maxiumum security lockup. To suggest otherwise in absolute terms is again, ridiculous.

However, there’s a tiny particle of truth here. Both Winfrey and the hypothetical felon I mentioned can be subject to worse treatment than they might otherwise receive due to racism. That much is true for both. But for Winfrey, being subject to occasional racist slights doesn’t prevent her from being a billionaire and one of the most admired people on the planet. The guy in maximum security has a different life experience.

However, my objection to the “same fate” assertion aside, my biggest beef with the idea that all black people are the same is that Gleason Golightly (hey, look at this last name for Pete’s sake) in fact is just as cynical about white people as all other black people. He just knows how to manipulate the system to his advantage better. So the story leaves no space for blacks to actually be conservative. No, if they seem different, it’s because they are working the system.

This is observed in the opening scene. The aliens speak like Ronald Reagan, which white people in the story trust, but black people don’t. All black people. There’s no room in the story for some black people to have liked Reagan–no, all are assumed to be the same. Or merely pretending to be different, like Gleason Golightly. There’s no space for individualism or individual convictions.

Note, someone could also say the story also portrays all white people as being the same, but it actually doesn’t. Jewish people are in particular set aside from other white people and the story further implies that guilt-ridden whites might actually desire to help blacks. I think that’s hugely significant and will say more about it in a bit.

Note also that Critical Race Theorists do not hold to real racial differences. They believe race is a social construct and the biological differences in race are minor–I totally agree there. But at the same time, they hold all of the United States–and broader, the whole world to a lesser degree, basically is acculturated the same way concerning race. So the unanimity of racial experience this story treats and inescapble and I think CRT in general treats race and racism as inescapable.

Disagreement #2. Racism is the Central Axis of Oppression–Nobody Would Sell Green-Eyed Redheads?

The story flat out says that nobody would have considered for one moment a request from the aliens to take, for example, green-eyed redheads. Really? Such an assertion is easily shown to be false.

Remember the post I did on Speculative Faith that talked about how early plantation owners found out African indentured servants were more profitable that Irish indentured servants? Because the Irish died at higher rates from malaria? At the end of a period of seven years service, both Irish indentured servants and African indentured servants used to be set free, with a small “gift” of land and a few tools…which didn’t cost that much for the Irish, because a lot of them didn’t live out the seven years.

Whereas for the West Africans, many of whom carry a recessive sickle cell gene that makes them resistant to malaria (one of only a few genuine biological differences in races), that got too expensive. So the plantation owners pressured the colonial legistatures to change the legal status over time, so that black people would not be set free. To protect their profits. (Then the society became increasingly racist to justify their position of dominance.)

But let’s not forget that at one point in Colonial history, a certain number of green-eyed redheads were in fact shipped to the Americas and forced to work on plantations. White people did in fact sell white people.

And not just there. Slavs sold other Slavs down the great rivers of Russia for money (some people claim the word “slave” derives from the more ancient ethnic term for the Slavic nationality). Aztecs enslaved other tribes of Central Mexico. And West Africans in positions of power helped capture other Africans–and sold them to European slave traders.

The central premise of the story, of human beings selling other human beings to gain something for themselves is something we see over and over again in the pages of history. Sadly. Tragically.

But the idea that only because of racism would someone consider such a trade–that idea is false. Easily shown to be false.

Disagreement #3, White People Will Only Help Black People from Negative Motivations

In the story, there are only two motives given for white people to help blacks. One, to not be left alone at the bottom of the social order, specifically applied to Jewish people–which might make sense in the context of the story, but does it make sense in the real world? Do Jewish people help black people with the notion that doing so will always keep black people inferior to them?

Actually, if we imagined this to be true of white people who help blacks in general, it would be subversive to CRT, or at least I think it would be. Could it really be that white people believe helping black people will keep them eternally superior, social-standing-wise, to blacks? Ugh.

Look, I have no trouble perceiving that human beings are riddled with evil motivations, but that’s some awfully dark stuff right there. If this idea were to be taken seriously, even the so-called white “allies” of black people are not to be trusted. They are really doing it for themselves.

Lest someone say I’m reading too much into the story, Derrick Bell directly said that the only time white people help black people is when “interests converge” so that white people are getting something out of it (he said so in multiple ways, but for an example, follow this link).

Hey, is it true that a lot of what human beings claim is helping others really has a lot of selfish motivations, at least most of the time? Yes. Again, I agree humans are sinners. But is it always true that the only time any white person helps blacks is for self-interested reasons? Is this particular kind of self-interest worse than all other kinds? No, it isn’t. (Or else white people would not have gone through cycles of helping and oppressing one another in Europe before the Transatlantic slave trade ever began.)

And the other motivation the story give? Guilt.

White Guilt But Not Empathy

The Space Traders doesn’t portray a single white person showing genuine empathy for black people. Rabbi Specter seems empathetic for a bit–but then his true motives of self-interest are revealed in the story.

Guilt is mentioned as something white people will experience after the fact of betraying blacks–but isn’t guilt at least somewhat related to empathy? Isn’t it possible to appeal to those white people who have suffered in life based on their hardship that black people are also suffering? Some of whom are suffering worse? All of whom who are subject to random racism?

But that’s not the argument CRT makes. Instead it talks about “white privilege” in the singular, as if all white people have the same life experience as one another. A proposition which white people who have suffered more than normal in life find especially distasteful.

Doesn’t tapping into “white guilt” seem to be the motivation behind mentioning “white privilege”? So The Space Traders and Critical Race Theory acknowledges there’s such a thing as a guilty conscience. That in spite of being sinners, we have this grace that can lead to repentence.

This is very important to undestanding Critical Race Theory in my estimation–such theorists want to help black people and other oppressed minorities. But in general, they only think white people will help them if they get hit between the eyes with their own guilt of racism.

Almost Like a Revival Meeting

Isn’t this almost like the old-fashioned Evangelical revival meeting? “You know you are a sinner! Come forth and repent, and you shall be made clean by the blood of Jesus!” And people got up and walked the aisle, thowning themselves down in repentant prayer.

“You know you are a racist! Disavow your racism and denounce those who have not yet repented! Then you can feel that you are clean!” So people come out, snarkily attacking anyone who dares question white privilege. Creating a divide, where the “repentant” develop true missionary zeal, but people who might be empathetic on racial issues become less empathetic, because they don’t believe they are especially sinful, thank you very much.

You know, I don’t want to deny individualism. I deeply believe in it. So I will not assert all white people who embrace CRT have the same motivation. Not so.

But if we are going to play the game of imputing motivations on people other than ourselves in broad, sweeping terms, such a method can make supporters of Critical Race Theory look as bad as anyone else.

A Point of Agreement

One thing The Space Traders pointed out that I agreed with and which I’d never thought of before. The story makes the observation that black people had been sacrificed for the nation before, so doing so again wasn’t unprecedented.

It specifically made mention of the US Constitution, which I also talked about in a previous post. I said in my previous post that the Constitution’s 3/5 compromise was a result of a political compromise between those who were against slavery and those who were for it. And so it was.

But The Space Traders pointed out that this compromise in effect sold out black people for the greater interests of the country. If the anti-slavery founders had been so anti-slavery, why had they not insisted on getting rid of slavery before making a federal union? Why hadn’t they refused to form a union with people dedicated to slavery?

We can say much about the history of the time, that the general expectation of many in the North was that slavery would come to an end on its own and that the Constitution actually reflects this expectation. Yes, I agree that was the common belief in the North and even some Southerners also agreed slavery would eventually end (though some disagreed with that very much). But so what?

It is actually true that anti-slavery Northerners sold out black people for the sake of making a single federal union. They compromised–in a negative way.

We could imagine things would be even worse for black people if there had been a Northern Union and a Southern Union from the beginning. But we can’t be sure about that–and it’s no excuse anyway. Yes, it really has happened in US history that black people were sacrificed for what some people considered expedient. Though not just black people–but Critical Race Theory applies to other groups as well, so there’s no disagreement here.

Conclusion

My next post will talk about some other things that I think Critical Race Theory actually has seen correctly (in addition to offering new criticisms of it). There’s actual evidence of structual inequality in America. But such inequality doesn’t quite run down racial lines like is often implied. Nonetheless, such inequality should be addressed in a society that wants to be a meritocracy–it’s not fair to make some people run a metaphorical race with weights strapped to them that others don’t have.

But that’s for next time.

As for this week’s post, who has read The Space Traders? Do you agree or disagree with my analysis? Do you know of other science fiction or speculative stories that address race in a way as meaningful (or more) than The Space Traders? Please let me know your thoughts in the comments below.

Is Pop Culture Like a Sewer for Your Kids?

From bad brownies to sewer-dipping, what “folk wisdom” about discernment still influences Christian parents?
E. Stephen Burnett on Oct 6, 2020 · Series: The Pop Culture Parent: Bonus Features!
4 comments

For years, Christians have often spread several folk sayings about discerning good and evil.1 These sayings include the phrase, “If you play with fire, you will get burned,” or the phrase, “You reap what you sow,” which is based on Galatians 6:7.

But not every “common sense” or “folk wisdom” slogan is actually biblical wisdom.

For example, Christians may have heard the out-of-context quote of two words from Matthew 7:1, “Judge not,” as if that summed up Jesus’s teaching.

Other folk wisdom comes from evangelical or Western religious popular culture, such as “God helps those who help themselves,” or “Cleanliness is next to godliness.” Paul referred to similar slogans as “irreverent, silly myths” (1 Timothy 4:7).

Let’s survey a few of these folk sayings that aren’t biblical, but that might still influence the minds of Christian parents who are challenged to see popular culture in light of the gospel.

‘You wouldn’t eat brownies with a little dog poop mixed in!’

“So what if popular culture contains some good? If someone mixed dog poop into your brownie batter, would you eat them? Even a little corruption makes the whole work worthless.”

This slogan has a ring of truth.

But what counts as the “dog poop”?

Christians might point out elements such as sex and violence. But by that reasoning, we would have to admit that the Bible is itself a poop-contaminated brownie, for it also includes elements of sex and violence.

Context, however, influences any “element” of a cultural work, just like context influences our reading of the Bible. Christians know the Bible is not just a bucket full of disconnected pieces. We know God’s word puts the sex, violence, and profanity it contains into a specific context. It never glamorizes or excuses the abuse of sex, violence, or language. And that makes all the difference in how we understand why God included those episodes.

Likewise, human culture is also more than a bucket full of disconnected “pieces” such as bad words, violence, or sex. Our stories and songs are much more like human beings, complex networks of ideas and images, mixtures of good and bad.

After all, each piece of popular culture came from a person or group of people, and their imaginations are messy mixtures of truth and error, good and bad.

Every one of our entertainments, whether made by a non-Christian or a Christian, is like this. In fact, every human being is like this.

Would we compare every individual person to a poop-infested brownie?

Would we outright reject each one of them because of their flaws?

Jesus did not reject people this way, and we do not reject our children because of sin. Why not? Because we respect them as image-bearers, those entrusted by God to us. Can we not also show respect to popular culture that is made by God’s image-bearers, even while we take caution to avoid elements that pose exceptional risks to our children’s hearts?

‘You don’t need to swim in the sewer to know what’s in it.’

Past generations certainly seem to have enjoyed drawing their popular-culture metaphors out of the toilet.

But this saying is just as flawed as the brownies-with-poop folk wisdom.

It implies people can become “clean” if only we avoid nasty culture, ignoring the truth that our hearts are more like the polluted sewers, and we cannot avoid it.

It also slanders popular culture as if it’s only a filthy sewer. This, of course, ignores the truth that popular culture contains God-given fragments of grace and truth. And it ignores the call that Jesus gives Christians to go even into the actual sewer-like places of the world.

The Christian life is not about avoiding dirtiness to keep ourselves clean. It’s about receiving God’s love and sharing that love with those around us. That means we must be willing to deal dirty people, as well as our own inner-dirt. And it means wisely engaging the culture around us to love the people who are formed by it, even if that culture is dirtier than we’d like.

‘Government agents learn to recognize counterfeit bills not by studying counterfeits, but by studying the real thing.’

In this metaphor, non-Christian popular culture is counterfeit culture, and Christian culture counts as the “real thing.” And if non-Christian popular culture is a counterfeit, we have no need of it. We should stick only with Christian cultures that, we assume, only celebrate truth.

But in fact sin lurks in every cultural work, no matter who creates the work.

And the grace of God shines to some extent in every cultural work, whether made by Christians or non-Christians.

The folk saying also bypasses the fact that our true standard, the Bible, itself challenges us to compare its truth with the world’s counterfeits. For example, see Psalm 34:8, “taste and see that the Lord is good,” and Isaiah 44, which compares God with people’s idolatrous worship of wooden blocks.

Treasury agents are certainly trained to recognize counterfeits. It is true that they start by familiarizing themselves with real money’s appearance and texture. But they don’t stop there. They also compare and contrast real money with known counterfeits in circulation so that they can easily distinguish between the real and the counterfeit in a fast-moving vocation.

Disregard ‘folk wisdom’; acquire biblical wisdom

We could consider several more Christian folk wisdom sayings about popular culture. But these three are sufficient to make the point: What passes as biblical wisdom is sometimes neither biblical, nor particularly wise. These pithy phrases too often oversimplify issues that deserve nuanced consideration. Too often they reject real cultural discernment for an easy, less demanding counterfeit of discernment.

There are no shortcuts for exercising biblical discernment. When you hear examples of Christian “folk wisdom,” whether about popular culture or any other topic, be sure to always compare the slogans with what Scripture really says!

The Pop Culture Parent: Helping Kids Engage Their World for Christ

Parents often feel at a loss with popular culture and how it fits in with their families. They want to love their children well, but it can be overwhelming to navigate the murky waters of television, movies, games, and more that their kids are exposed to every day.

Popular culture doesn’t have to be a burden. The Pop Culture Parent equips mothers, fathers, and guardians to build relationships with their children by entering into their popular culture–informed worlds, understanding them biblically, and passing on wisdom.

This resource by authors Jared Moore, E. Stephen Burnett, and Ted Turnau provides Scripture-based, practical help for parents to enjoy the messy gift of popular culture with their kids.

Order The Pop Culture Parent from:

  • Amazon
  • 10ofThose.com
  • New Growth Press
  • The Gospel Coalition store
  • ChristianBook.com
  1. This article is adapted from material in older drafts of The Pop Culture Parent: Helping Kids Engage Their World for Christ. I’m coauthor of this new nonfiction book, with Ted Turnau and Jared Moore. It’s available from our publisher, New Growth Press, or you can order from Amazon. ↩

Finalists – 2020 Spec Faith Fall Writing Challenge

In alphabetical order by last name, our 2020 Spec Faith Fall Writing Challenge finalists are as follows:
Rebecca LuElla Miller on Oct 5, 2020 · Series: 2020 Spec Faith Fall Witing Challenge
1 comment

Here are our 2020 Spec Faith Fall Writing Challenge finalists and the poll in which you may vote to make the choice of winner.

Just a reminder. This is NOT a popularity contest. We really do want to acknowledge writers who have honed their skills and demonstrated their ability in this little exercise. So, those who vote in the poll, please be sure you read all three of the finalist entries and give a fair assessment.

Special thanks to all who entered and all who gave their feedback.

We haven’t had as many comments as I would have liked, but it’s not too late. If readers can give some feedback that would help the writers, that would really make this writing challenge valuable.

We did have a tie, so there are four finalists. In alphabetical order by last name, our 2020 Spec Faith Fall Writing Challenge finalists are as follows:

  • Darlene N. Bocek
  • Shari Branning
  • Ann Milo
  • John Sweeting

All that’s left is to select the winner, and that’s also in the hands of our visitors. Choose from these finalists and vote in the poll at the end of this post for the one entry you think is best.

The entry receiving the most votes will be the winner, and the author will receive a $25 e-gift card from either Amazon or B&N. (In case of a tie, I’ll draw for the winner).

Voting will last until 8:00 A.M. (Pacific time), Monday, October 12.

And now the finalists’ entries (reformatted as necessary).

  • Darlene N. Bocek

      Stuffing the last item of clothing into her travel bag, Octavia glanced out the window once more to be sure that no one was on the road in front of her house.
     â€œMeow.”
     Octavia froze, eyes on Frank.
     His nostrils twitched. A rush of terror flooded over the old woman. How could he know? Impossible. He’d been out when it happened.
     She cleared her throat and zipped up the duffel bag.
     Frank rubbed his furry black hip against her bag, mewing. His tail flicked the zipper.
     Frank knew. Sweat beaded on her forehead. And if Frank knew, she’d never get away with it. Not again.
     She lifted him to her chest. “Sweet Frankie. We’re moving on.”
     The Mancoon brushed his forehead against her chin. She held her breath, but stroked his back.
     How am I going to escape if he knows? 
     Octavia’s eyes darted around the room, catching on a trunk. The trunk. 
     If he knew, he’d turn, and she’d be caught. Guaranteed. Frankie was like that, demanding, controlling, ready to snap. He’d have to stay, poor thing.
     She took a slow step toward the trunk, and a sour whiff of what was inside sent shivers up her spine.
     Through the doorway she could see everything ready in the kitchen. An accident, like last time. She placed her hand on the lid of the trunk. She’d need to move fast, to get Frank in there with…”her.” 
     I hate doing this, buddy—she kissed his temple—but you leave me no choice.
     With feline swiftness, the cat bit her throat. Octavia yelped and dropped him. He ran out of the room and jumped onto the kitchen counter, next to his food dish—she gaped in horror—next to the candle. Yes. He knew. 
     She’d never get out alive.

– – – – –

  • Shari Banning

Stuffing the last item of clothing into her travel bag, Octavia glanced out the window once more to be sure that no one was on the road in front of her house. 

Torren Blackpaw, werewolf and jerk extraordinaire, had been stalking her for the past month. He’d claimed her as his mate. At least he claimed that he claimed her. Leave it to a werewolf to wield the antiquated, toxic tradition of claiming mates like the proverbial neanderthal’s club to get what he wanted. Unfortunately, what he wanted was her. But she had no intention of succumbing to that club, proverbial or otherwise, and getting dragged off to his cave. Or den. 

His ploys wouldn’t have caused her more than an eye roll if her clan actually backed her for once and cried poppycock. But whether he had them that bamboozled, or whether they were afraid to cross him, they had made it perfectly clear that she was on her own. 

Bag packed, she hurried across the road and slipped into the shade of the thick forest beyond. A few miles’ hike through dense underbrush brought her to an ancient, lightning-struck oak with a cleft in the trunk big enough to walk through. She stepped into the cool shade of the tree, gripping the rough, scarred bark at the edge of the cleft. Inside the tree she could see nothing but black. So it was true. A rift had opened in the ancient tree. Well, let Torren follow her into the human world then. 

With a deep breath and a final glance behind her she stepped through the rift into a different world. 

– – – – –

  • Ann Milo

Stuffing the last item of clothing into her travel bag, Octavia glanced out the window once more to be sure that no one was on the road in front of her house.

Poof! Angel appeared on her shoulder.

“Don’t go,” he whispered. “Don’t do it.”

Poof! Devil appeared next to him.

“Hey! What’re ya whispering for? She can’t hear ya!” Devil pulled out a megaphone. “GO! You should go!”

Angel covered his ears. “Pipe down!”

“WHAT?” Devil whipped around, bonking Angel with the megaphone and knocking him off Octavia’s shoulder.

Angel flapped along by the hem of Octavia’s pants.

“Ha!” cried Devil, prancing around.

Angel fluttered back up and landed on Octavia’s other shoulder. “Oh, dear! Where were we? Oh. Don’t go!”

Devil put his megaphone in Octavia’s ear. “WHY WOULD YOU LISTEN TO HIM? He’s wearing a skirt!”

“It’s called a robe,” cried Angel. “Don’t listen to him! He’s holding a fork!”

“Yes! Listen to goody two-shoes!” laughed Devil.

“Hey, where’re we going?”

Angel and Devil looked down as Octavia darted out the driveway.

“Hah! She’s getting away!” Devil hopped around, waving arms and legs as though on fire. “If you’d talked about something other than a fork, she might’ve listened to you.”

Angel leaned over. “Don’t do it.”

Octavia crossed the street.

“She did it.”

“Why’re you so evil?” Angel cried.

“Well, when I was a little devil, I fell from Heaven.”

“That’s too bad,” sighed Angel.

“Anh, shut up!”

Bump!

Devil and Angel went airborne and landed on their faces. Above Octavia’s shoulders, a scarlet banner fluttered over a covered tent reading “Charity Drive”.

“Hello!” Octavia pushed her travel bag across the counter. “Here’s my donation.”

Angel’s and Devil’s mouths dropped open like two hinges.

“Aha!” exclaimed Angel. “’When you give to the needy, don’t let your left hand know what your right hand is doing, so that your giving may be in secret.’”

– – – – –

  • John Sweeting

Stuffing the last item of clothing into her travel bag, Octavia glanced out the window once more to be sure that no one was on the road in front of her house.
    Bag slung over her shoulder and small travel chest in hand, she raced through the empty villa to the courtyard. Shamus, the only remaining house servant, held the reins of her chariot. Leaping aboard, she shook out her long wavy black hair in the sharp breeze. Her straight nose, fair skin, dark almond eyes, and lithe frame betrayed her Roman ancestry.
    Why didn’t Father take us from this island when the Legions departed? Now I am stuck here protecting his secrets when all the new King’s knights seek them, and me!
    â€œFare you well, My Lady,” Shamus called as she shook the reins and her two mares, Spitfire and Lightning, broke into a trot out the gates.
    â€œYou too, Shamus. Try to hold the villa if you wish. Its all yours now!”
    Scarcely had Octavia gone a mile, and she came around a bend to find four horses with riders blocking the way. Three were knights on their dark chargers. The fourth was a young woman on a white palfrey.
    â€œHello, Dindrane,” Octavia addressed the women. “Did you really need three escorts? Percival, Galahad, and Bors, I believe?”
    â€œGive us the scroll, Octavia,” Dindrane ordered. “We know you have the secrets of the Sword, the Ship, and the Tree.”
    Percival dismounted and said, “Or just tell us, Lady Octavia, where do we find the Grail?”
    Octavia laughed. Then, seeing their stunned expressions, laughed again.
    Catching her breath, she told them, “You ask, where is the Grail? You should ask, what is the Grail? For if you knew, terror would halt your search.”

– – – – –

Be sure to share this post and poll with your friends and family, your Instagram or Pinterest, your Facebook and Twitter accounts. The more voters, the better. And now, your vote:


I Respect C. S. Lewis, But Disagree with Parts of The Last Battle

C. S. Lewis was wrong to insinuate in this story that a man who worshiped a false god could somehow also be serving the true God.
Audie Thacker on Oct 2, 2020
41 comments

I think I was in the fourth grade when I received a box set of The Chronicles of Narnia for Christmas. Then I’m pretty sure I read through them rather quickly. That actually wasn’t my first experience with Narnia, though. I remember watching an animated version of The Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe on television in my childhood.

Yes, I enjoyed the stories, and I think I read them more than once back then.

Still, I can’t say that they didn’t cause some difficulties in my thinking.

The Last Battle is the last book in the Narnia series, and it’s about the last days of Narnia and the world in which Narnia was located. The last king of Narnia, Tirian, hears rumors that Aslan has returned. But Aslan is acting very differently than the accounts say he acted in the past. Then, while the king is trying to learn about this supposed Aslan, an enemy nation invades and conquers Narnia. This leaves the king and his companions, including two children from this world, in a hopeless fight. Finally the real Aslan steps in, and the darkest hours of Narnia become the brightest of days in a new and better world.

There is a lot of good stuff in this book. The idea of syncretism, shown in the heinous idea of “Tashlan,” is displayed as ridiculous. Readers see heroism in a lost cause. The story focuses on where a Christian’s real hope should be: not on the things of this world, even the good things, but on Christ and the hope for a better world to come.

So, what about The Last Battle caused problems for my young mind?

In Aslan’s new world awaits one strange person, a Calormene man. He worshiped and was devoted to the god of his people, Tash, and hated Aslan. Yet when he arrives in this better world, he meets Aslan himself:

But the Glorious One bent down his golden head and touched my forehead with his tongue and said, Son, thou art welcome. But I said, Alas, Lord, I am no son of thine but the servant of Tash. He answered, Child, all the service thou hast done to Tash, I account as service done to me.1

And then Aslan explains further:

. . . For I and [Tash] are of such different kinds that no service which is vile can be done to me, and none which is not vile can be done to him. Therefore if any man swear by Tash and keep his oath for the oath’s sake, it is by me that he has truly sworn, though he know it not, and it is I who reward him. And if any man do a cruelty in my name, then, though he says the name Aslan, it is Tash whom he serves and by Tash his deed is accepted. Dost thou understand, Child? . . .

Beloved, said the Glorious One, unless thy desire had been for me thou wouldst not have sought so long and so truly. For all find what they truly seek.2

I suppose Lewis is not the first person who has wanted to think there exists some kind of back door into Heave. Or that God will judge people by a standard like their intentions or hearts. Or that maybe even people who might have wholeheartedly served, obeyed, and worshiped a god other than Jesus might still be acceptable and find themselves in Heaven. I know when I read The Last Battle, I found the idea appealing. Being a child who had not yet gone far into thinking for himself and trying to find the real truth, I concluded that this story’s writer had to be telling me the truth.

It’s never easy to disagree with someone you respect, and it didn’t happen overnight for me. But there may come times when we must disagree.

C. S. Lewis was wrong to insinuate in this story that a man who worshiped a false god could somehow also be serving the true God.

For by works of the law no human being will be justified in his sight, since through the law comes knowledge of sin.

—Romans 3:20

To keep a vow is a good thing, it is obeying the law. And that is the point; it is a work of law.

The problem with that is, we do a lousy job of keeping the law. What if we even bypassed God’s Law and just looked at the laws we create for ourselves, whether in our societies or personal standards? If we are honest, if we could really see ourselves as we really are, even then we would conclude that we can’t keep those laws well.

If we had to depend on our own efforts to reach paradise, even through some kind of back door, we would fail.

Yet there is hope, as Romans 3 explains directly after verse 20:

But now the righteousness of God has been manifested apart from the law, although the Law and the Prophets bear witness to it—the righteousness of God through faith in Jesus Christ for all who believe. For there is no distinction: for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, and are justified by his grace as a gift, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus, whom God put forward as a propitiation by his blood, to be received by faith . . .

—Romans 3:21–25

Here is our hope, our only true hope: salvation, forgiveness of sins, justification by grace through faith in Jesus Christ.

Christian readers have the responsibility to read with our eyes open, especially when reading someone we respect and largely agree with.

Authors must also make sure our writings, even our fiction, even our stories set on space stations located on the edge of the galaxy or in a fairy kingdom of elves and unicorns, to make sure even those things display, teach, and proclaim true Christian doctrine.

The Last Battle offers much that is good. “Tashlan” might almost be considered prophetic, if you want to explore the concept of “Chrislam” or any other extreme ecumenical compromises. But I’m a reader who was also affected by the bad ideas in this story. No, I do not say The Last Battle should be not be read. Just read it with your eyes open.

  1. Lewis, C.S.. The Last Battle (Chronicles of Narnia Book 7) (p. 90). HarperCollins. Kindle Edition. ↩
  2. Ibid, pages 90–91. ↩

Two Classics

Even after that bitter end, I am sure: Dostoevsky and Austen are like each other.
Shannon McDermott on Sep 30, 2020
3 comments

I read two classics this past summer: Jane Austen’s Northanger Abbey and Dostoevsky’s Devils. I was maybe two hundred pages into Devils when I realized, with a measure of surprise, that the book reminded me of Jane Austen. Not the political revolution, of course, or the atheism and murder; the book’s conclusion, in which Dostoevsky briskly mowed down half his cast, shows everything that Dostoevsky is and Jane Austen is not. But even after that bitter end, I am sure: Dostoevsky and Austen are like each other.

The characterization in their novels has a similar texture: at once sharp and deep. Both Dostoevsky and Austen stand outside their characters in their narration, taking the tone of an observer of rare acuity and no inclination to cover over anything. Neither ever saw a fool without observing and declaring the fact. They are unsparing. At the same time, they draw so comprehensive a sketch of their characters that it feels a little like empathy. The fools may have been lampooned, but they were at least understood.

A broader similarity also plays into this likeness in characterization. Austen and Dostoevsky share a keen awareness of the foibles that seam human nature. The ordinary foolishness and common weaknesses of humanity are fully understood by both writers, and finely displayed. Dostoevsky is amused by people behaving absurdly, and Austen is positively delighted. They catch the comedy of foolishness. They catch, with even greater skill, its darkness. In this Dostoevsky is stronger, but Austen captures the same truth, that workaday follies can be both laughable and destructive. They carry, sometimes, a surprising cost.

Most strikingly, Austen and Dostoevsky root their stories in society. In many novels, society – the broader community, with its rules and workings – exists as little more than background. Events play out, and characters live, at a distant remove from the community. There is no sense of what ordinary life might be like. But to read Austen and Dostoevsky is to enter a society. The shibboleths are different than our own, but the organism is the same: the requirements and prohibitions, the expectations and interactions, all the self-conscious fussiness. Austen and Dostoevsky make use of the broad conventions of society, such as who shall marry whom. Their mastery is in how they use the minor conventions. They bring forward the weight of trivialities. It doesn’t matter, really, whether you dance or don’t dance. What matters is what other people make of you for either one.

In Dostoevsky, all these things are shaded more darkly. His psychological portraits sketch the reasons of murderers, his fools descend into wickedness and ruin, his grand ball dissolves in panic as the city catches fire. The similarities between his works and Austen’s are subtle and fascinating. The differences are obvious, and ultimately more important. So profound is the divide that one cannot imagine Austen even touching the subjects that Dostoevsky wrestled. Dickens might have taken up Dostoevsky’s themes, though with far more sentiment and optimism. But if Jane Austen had written about revolution, or moral anarchy, or the psychology of suicide, she would not have been Jane Austen.

And the world would have lost something. One may prefer Jane Austen; one may prefer Fyodor Dostoevsky. Either position is fair. But it is good that Austen was herself, and not Dostoevsky, just as it is good that Dostoevsky was himself, and not Austen. Such is the diversity that makes the world rich.

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Lorehaven magazine, spring 2020

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Lorehaven helps Christian fans explore fantastical stories for Christ’s glory: fantasy, science fiction, and beyond. Articles, the library, reviews, podcasts, gifts, and the Lorehaven Guild community help fans discern and enjoy the best Christian-made fantastical stories, applying their meanings to the real world Jesus Christ calls us to serve. Subscribe free to get any updates you choose and to access the Lorehaven Guild.
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