C. S. Lewis once called a certain method of creating stories “pure moonshine.” He insisted this mechanical process wasn’t how he created his stories—and strongly implied that other Christians ought not use such a method either.¹ But in response to this mechanistic method, some Christian creators err on the side of what they might regard as full creative freedom.

“We get to use our liberated imaginations!” they claim. “So let’s not have any of this stuff about how our stories should teach readers.”

Lewis, however, actually did not favor this approach. And I think sometimes we get wrong his description of how he created his own fairy stories. As a result, we might accidentally believe Lewis believed only in imagination and not also in creating stories to teach Christian truth! But first, we must recall the original quote from Lewis, and the very real truth it reflects even apart from Lewis’s original context.

How not to write a Christian fairy story

Imagine a board room of frowning and likely monocled elder nonprofit board members, sitting about a table. They are respectable. They are ministerial. On the wall hangs a large wooden cross, right beside the painted-on logo of the nonprofit ministry. Their leader rises to his feet.

“Gentlemen!” he proclaims. “We must find a way to say something about Christianity to children. Now, what shall we do?”

A spiritual hush falls over the room as the men confer in various subgroups. At the meeting’s end, they present their proposals.

“Continued presentation of slow, methodical Sunday-school lessons as before,” says group one.

“More sports celebrities and tastier treats in gatherings for teen-agers,” says group two.

Group three appoints its regent, who shyly raises his hand. “Well,” says he. “I hear that fairy tales might be coming back into vogue …”

Silverware clatters. Heads turn. And the ministerial chieftain pert near loses his monocle.

“Fairy-tales!” he exclaims. “Why—why, Johnson, that’s—that’s brilliant!”

Johnson is taken aback.

The chief minister flushes with excitement, jowls a-twitching. “Why, yes. This is the perfect chance to say something about Christianity to children. We shall use, as our instrument: the fairy tale! Now, what must be done about it? Ah, yes! Of course, we must collect information about child-psychology. We must have a subcommittee. Hire ghost-writers, as we decide what age-group to write for. Then for this tale’s outline, we must draw up a list of basic Christian truths. Ah, yes, and allegory! We must of course fill this tale with ‘allegories’ …”

Lewis: ‘I couldn’t write in that way at all’

Of course, at the last I’m paraphrasing the very approach that C. S. Lewis specifically disavowed. In his essay, “Sometimes Fairy Stories May Say Best What’s To Be Said,”² Lewis is making a larger point about a story-creator’s different identities. (More on this in a moment.) To illustrate, he refers to his own creation:

Some people seem to think that I began by asking myself how I could say something about Christianity to children; then fixed on the fairy tale as an instrument; then collected information about child-psychology and decided what age-group I’d write for; drew up a list of basic Christian truths and hammered out ‘allegories’ to embody them. This is all pure moonshine. I couldn’t write in that way at all. Everything began with images; a faun carrying an umbrella, a queen on a sledge, a magnificent lion. At first there wasn’t even anything Christian about them; that element pushed itself in of its own accord.³

Keep in mind that last sentence’s first two words (“At first …”) as we note Lewis’s real rebuke to this mechanical, ministerial “teaching tools” approach. Even when he limits these phrases to a hypothetical view of his own creative process, it seems clear he views this as “pure moonshine” that is not just about himself. We might wonder what kind of letters Lewis received, or reviews he read, to result in this odd theory about his creative process.

That’s a lesson for Christians who might be tempted to view fairy tales with this kind of pragmatism. It’s not an approach I would ever endorse. If you try it, you might get a not-terrible story. But you won’t get a good or great story—and you won’t even get a very truthful story.

But Lewis doesn’t stop with the raw imagination

As I’ve said, however, some Christians repeat Lewis’s quote with a host of assumptions. I haven’t seen any of these very recently, and so I’m not singling out anyone. This is more of a meme I see shared about Christian-creative circles. It might be joined by assumptions like these:

• “Lewis didn’t try to insert Christianity in his books, so neither should we.”
• “We need creative freedom! Making stories is all about imagination, not teaching.”
• “We shouldn’t try to be Christian creators, only creators who happen to be Christians.”
• “If we let down our guard and consider any direct Christian purpose to our stories, we’ll end up becoming (gasp) preachy.”
• “So let’s just focus on creating good things and let anything ‘deeper’ just happen on its own.”

If the pragmatic teach-first-then-fake-“imagine” approach is “pure moonshine,” as Lewis said, then we might call this response a weaker, watered-down moonshine. In fact, it represents another notion that Lewis specifically disavows in his “Sometimes Fairy-Stories” essay.

Three main reasons make this clear:

First, Lewis isn’t writing this essay solely to explain his Narnian behind-the-scenes. He’s exploring a larger theme about the creative process.

Second, Lewis is speaking about how a creator, including himself, starts a healthy creative process—but says the process doesn’t finish there!

Third, Lewis speaks not just of using one’s imagination, but explores the story-creator’s role at three overlapping stages: Author (imagining), Author (giving Form), and Author as Man/citizen/Christian.

Even C. S. Lewis’s phrase for an author’s first imagined images, “the bubbling,” gives form to this concept by describing it with a vivid image (and Lewis keeps building on this helpful metaphor).

Story stage 1: ‘The Author’

Lewis starts his essay by dismissing “the renaissance ideas of ‘pleasing’ and ‘instructing.'” That is, he isn’t interested here in the related question of whether the created work is meant to entertain or to teach. Instead he says:

All I want to use is the distinction between the author as author and the author as man, citizen, or Christian. What this comes to for me is that there are usually two reasons for writing an imaginative work, which may be called Author’s reason and the Man’s. If only one of these is present, then, so far as I am concerned, the book will not be written. If the first is lacking, it can’t; if the second is lacking, it shouldn’t.⁴

This sets the tone. Lewis is clear that he does want Christian creators to think not just as “the author as author” but also “the author as man, citizen, or Christian.” He’s calling the serious creator to consider not only the imaginative life, that is, the part where you get pictures and start giving them form. Lewis wants us to explore the author’s responsibility as a person. Lewis calls this Man, and loads into the label a biblical definition of a human being who has been redeemed by Christ for a higher purpose.

From here he talks about “the author as author.” This is the fun part.

As an author (or creator), you’re inspired to create something. You get images, usually unbidden, by using your imagination. Lewis speaks of “the bubbling,” what he calls this disorganized array of ideas and pictures. He says this initial creative rush is like the feeling of being in love.

Only then does he give a personal example about his own images: the faun in the wood, a witch on a sleigh.

Yet Lewis does not stop there!

Story stage 2: ‘The Form’

Lewis says of the initial outpouring of images and ideas:

This ferment leads to nothing unless it is accompanied with a longing for a Form: verse or prose, short story, novel, play, or what not. When these two things click you have the Author’s impulse complete.⁵

Story-making doesn’t end with the images alone; otherwise you would have no story that others could enjoy. The form starts to organize these images and give them purpose. For the first story in Lewis’s Chronicles of Narnia series, he said the fairy tale was a perfect form for “what’s to be said”:

As these images sorted themselves into events (i.e. became a story) they seemed to demand no love interest and no close psychology. But the Form which excludes these things is the fairy tale. And the moment I thought of that I fell in love with the Form itself: its brevity, its severe restraints on description, its flexible traditionalism, its inflexible hostility to all analysis, digression, reflections, and ‘gas’. . . . The fairy tale seemed the ideal Form for the stuff I had to say.⁶

Lewis doesn’t explore this here, but this idea of “the form” fits perfectly with God’s original creation of the world.

Genesis 1:2 says “the earth was without form and void.” Then God intervened. Over six days, he gave his new world its form. Finally, on day six, he breathed into a living, physical form that would reflect back his own image, the imago Dei.

Then God calls his created humans to imitate his behavior by stewarding the Earth’s resources (Genesis 1:28). That is, men and women will act as God’s royal regents in God’s world, using God’s stuff to make stuff. They must take a luscious garden, and cultivate soils and plants and spaces. They take raw minerals and polish them into gems (the same kinds of human-shaped gems that later feature in biblical descriptions of heavenly cities). Later, they take true-life stories, and re-sort their elements into imaginary stories.

Such a concept long predates Lewis: the idea of cultivating our world. We take God’s gifts, and we train one another, share knowledge, and reshape these resources. For a story’s author, we don’t leave our images “raw” and hidden to ourselves. Otherwise we would have no story! We polish them, reshape them, turn them into stories proper—stories that can be shared for the benefit of many other people.

This is no sacrifice of creative freedom. It is an embrace of creative freedom. In Lewis’s case, he found his chosen form, the fairy tale, a great liberation for the potential of his images. It is through discipline, organization, and limits that any story finally breathes the breath of life.

Story stage 3: ‘The Man’

Finally we come to the moment that may surprise some Christian creators. Yes, C. S. Lewis does believe in expressing faith through imagination by intention. Yes, he does believe in “saying something about Christianity to children” on purpose. And yes, he does believe that in his creative case, while “at first there wasn’t even anything Christian about [his images], later “that element pushed itself in of its own accord”—and by his willful design as a Christian person!

Remember, Lewis has spoken of two earlier creative stages: the imagining of images, and then the cultivation of these images into a Form. These are the tasks of the “author as author.” Now comes the author’s final identity. Lewis calls this “the Man,” and associates this label with the terms “citizen, or Christian.” The first term represents a Christian creator as member of the community (or city, or country, or humanity altogether). The second term indicates the creator’s position as a new man—a person redeemed for Kingdom mission by Christ.

For Lewis, this identity of human/citizen/Christian is just as essential to making the story:

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

That was the Man’s motive. But of course he could have done nothing if the Author had not been on the boil first.⁷

Yes, Virginia, Lewis did want to create stories to “say something about Christianity to children.”

Lewis did eventually want his images, given the fairy tale form, to teach Christian truth.

You can affirm that fact about his stated motives, and yet reject the “Sunday school associations” that stifle our imaginations, or ruin authentic emotional response to the gospel. Lewis didn’t insist on some artificial, inhuman divide between imagination and truth. He stated that his own stories started with images and grew into a form, and then Lewis found these stories’ human/citizen/Christian purpose in helping “all these things,” biblical truth, “appear in their real potency.”

How does Lewis’s creative structure help Christian fans?

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

In this podcast episode, Zackary Russell and I suggest some specific lessons this teaches Christian story creators. Yet these truths apply far more broadly to Christian fans of amazing Christian-made stories. Lewis’s creative structure may help us grow beyond some cliches about creativity. He can also help us find, enjoy, and support the stories by Christian authors who don’t get stuck in false imagination/truth divides.

First, we need to grow beyond the impulse to apologize for enjoying stories that have overtly human/citizen/Christian purpose.

Second, we need to expect that Christian creators are not just split-apart imagination-machines, but are also Christian, human citizens.

Third, let’s expect great Christian-made stories to begin as embryonic images. Then we must also expect them to walk as upright “forms,” then mature into “adults” with clear Christian purpose. Neither Lewis nor Jesus Christ expects some false either-or purpose. It’s both/and.

Finally, let’s review and clarify Lewis’s quote near the essay’s beginning:

. . . There are usually two reasons for writing an imaginative work, which may be called Author’s reason and the Man’s [reason]. If only one of these [reasons] is present, then, so far as I am concerned, the book will not be written. If the first [Author’s reason] is lacking, it can’t [be written]; if the second [Man’s reason] is lacking, it shouldn’t [be written].⁸

God the Author created his people. Jesus Christ the Son of Man saves his people.⁹ As Christians made in God’s image, we reflect all these identities. Therefore, in all our creative pursuits, we must reflect the Author as Creator and the Savior as Man, practicing our form-cultivated imaginations to share his beautiful truth with one another by design!

The Spec Faith 2020 Fall Writing Challenge is now officially closed to new entries. However, the evaluation phase continues. Why, you may be wondering. Why not close the contest to new entries and put up the poll so we can vote on the best one?

The answer is simple. We want all the entries, even those that came in at the deadline, to have a fair shot at the finals, and an opportunity to receive the same kind of evaluation as the entries that came in earlier last week.

Please take time to read and give your evaluation of the ones you haven’t seen yet. I’m speaking to myself here, because I have not had a chance to read and give feedback to all of them. You’ll find all the entries in comments to last Monday’s Challenge post.

Remember to indicate which you like best (no limit) by hitting the thumbs-up button, then reply to the entries with helpful comments as you see fit. In your replies, tell the authors what you like about their story or give them constructive criticism which might benefit them (whether you choose to give a thumb up or not). Remember, no thumbs down, please. Such negative feedback doesn’t help a writer know what they need to work on, so it is not helpful.

Next week I’ll announce the three finalists, based on your thumbs up during this evaluation phase and those given last week as the submissions came in. From those three finalists, I’ll create a poll, and we’ll vote for a winner.

The drawback of a readers’ choice challenge is that it might turn into a popularity contest. On the other hand, we need reader feedback for the challenge to be successful. With both these facts in mind, I think the best answer is for Spec Faith visitors to connect with family, friends, and followers (our share buttons make this quite easy) and encourage their fair and unbiased evaluation (as opposed to, “Vote for mine—you don’t really need to read any of the entries,” which I’ve seen from some other contests).

Thanks ahead of time for letting others know that their feedback is a helpful part of the contest.

And special thanks to each of the authors who shared their work with us. We have a nice variety. What fun reads!

To find the entries, follow any of the links in this article (such as this one)—the entries are in the comments section of that post. You might consider reading them last to first.

Brand Of Light by Ronie Kendig

INTRODUCTION—BRAND OF LIGHT, The Droseran Saga Book 1

Winner of the following:

• 2020 Realm Award, Science Fiction
• 2020 Alliance Award, Reader’s Choice
• 2020 Carol Award, Speculative Fiction

Synopsis
There’s a price on her head, and it has everything to do with the brand on her arm.

Tertian Space Coalition has blessed every planet in the quadrants with high technology, save one: Drosero. But in spite of their tenuous treaty with the ruling clans, TSC has plans for the backward planet. And they’re not alone.

After a catastrophic explosion, Kersei Dragoumis awakens in a derelict shuttle, alone, injured, and ignorant of the forbidden technology that has swept her into a nightmare. The brand she’s borne since childhood burns mysteriously, but the pain is nothing to that when she learns her family is dead and she is accused of their murders.

Across the quadrants, Marco Dusan responds to the call of a holy order—not to join them, but to seek a bounty. Gifted—or cursed—with abilities that mark him a Kynigos, a tracker sworn to bring interplanetary fugitives to justice, Marco discovers this particular bounty has nothing to do with justice and everything to do with prophecy. One that involves the hunter as much as the hunted.

– – – – –

EXCERPT FROM BRAND OF LIGHT BY RONIE KENDIG

PROLOGUE
KALONICA, DROSERO

The tap, tap, tap of rain drilled into Achilus’s brain, holding him captive against sleep. He flopped over yet again, kicking the confining coverlet, and stared into the darkness. Would this reek-cursed night never end?

A strange light fell from the sky and glided over the rain-pebbled window. Blinking, suddenly aware of a deep thrum that had run under the rain for the last several minutes, Achilus threw off the coverlet and scrambled across the mattress. He landed with a thump on the thick run and scurried to the large window that towered over him. Rain sprinted down the beveled glass, blurring his view. He squinted after the ominous blue light that now fled the palace, as if on orders from his father. But it was not the light itself—unnatural and clearly not born of any torch—that held him rapt, but the way it moved.

Flying.

Like an aetos from Mount Kalonic, which stood guard over Lampros City. Chills wormed through his bare feet as he watched the fading illumination. Fear played havoc on his stomach. What had it been? Why was it here in Lampros City? Was it dangerous? And it stunk. He held an arm over his nose, hating himself for being afraid and it for irritating his senses.

Blood and boil! Must the reek be so rotten?

“Riders!” came a shout from the watchtower. “Riders from the cliffs!”

Achilus stilled, breath trapped in his throat. The cliffs—that was the direction of the light! But people out in the rage of the Kalonican storm? The matter must be urgent. Pulling his unwilling gaze from the now-black night sky, he craned his neck to see the portcullis. Bushed onto his tiptoes. If he were just a little taller, a little older, he could see who disturbed his father’s sleep at such a late hour.

“Open the gate!”

Cursing his age and height, Achilus wished himself older. Father promised when he was ten Achilus would be present during receptions. Which meant he could stand by the great fire pit in the solar as the intruders presented themselves. Surely their news must be terrible for them to tempt the peril of the hour and storm.

At the clanging of chains raising the gate, he pressed his nose to the window. His breath bloomed on the leaded glass, fogging his view. With a grunt, he swiped it with his sleeve, looking past the raindrops sparkling like crystals. Torchlight scampered across the bailey. Shadows shifted but he could discern nothing save the drenching rain.

Noises in the hall yanked him around. Achilus threw himself at the door, catching the knob. With a light press against the brass, he eased it open. In the hall, Father’s broad shoulders faded as he descended the stairs. The sadness and anger trailing him drew Achilus into the open. Straining to discern what prickled the hairs on his neck, he stared into the recesses of his brothers’ rooms, darkened by the night. What had he—

A shadow moved toward him.

Cold dread chilled Achilus. Braced, he pulled in a breath and watched the shape glide across the black floors.

“Archilus?”

Air whooshed from his lungs as his younger brother shuffled closer. “You should be in bed, Silvanus.”

Rubbing an eye, his brother grunted. “The banging woke me.”

“Go back to the nursery. Check on Darius.”

He swatted at the air. “Aw, all that baby does is sleep. I don’t know why we needed another.”

“Go back. Now!” Jaw jutted, Achilus waited until his brother started for the nursery. Voices from the grand foyer turned him. He tiptoed to the balustrade and glanced over the rail. Two golden aetos twisted in battle glared at him, their tangled shapes set into the marble floor.

He descended, the smooth rail guiding him down the twenty-four steps. In the great hall, that chatter rose to a dull roar. Heart racing, Achilus stopped on the last step. Many voices. Many . . . smells.

Fear choked him. “I am in my own home—the castle, for boil’s sake! There is nothing to fear.” Jaw tight, he left the safety of the stairs and inched toward the great hall, breath harnessed.

Swirls of cool air slammed him, freezing Achilus just across the threshold, while his gaze swept the room. A whirl of black erupted—a man. Large. Eyes black and fierce. Shoulders larger than the great pit! Achilus gaped. By the Ancient, he looked as big as a Zeev! Long black cloak matched his pants, belted tunic, and hair slicked into a queue down his back. A faint blue glow came from his him—no, his wrist. Something he wore gave off dim light.

The man leaned toward him.

Though everything in him screamed to run, Achilus stood rooted. Balled his fists. Lifted his chin. Fury or friend, he’d fight.

– – – – –

AUTHOR BIO—RONIE KENDIG

An Army brat, Ronie Kendig grew up in the classic military family, with her father often TDY and her mother holding down the proverbial fort. Their family moved often, which left Ronie attending six schools by the time she’d entered fourth grade. Her respite and “friends” during this time were the characters she created.

It was no surprise when she married a military veteran—her real-life hero—in June 1990 and recently celebrated their 30th Anniversary. Despite the craziness of life, Ronie finds balance and peace with her faith, family, retired military working dog VVolt N629, and Benning the Stealth Golden a short train ride from New York City.

Ronie has a deep love and passion for people, which is why she earned a degree in Psychology from Liberty University. Ronie speaks and teaches across the country and mentors other writers.

For several weeks now I’m been promising a post with the title of “The Rise of White Supremacy,” saying that will be the next post. But I’m not there yet. In fact, God knows if I will ever arrive at writing such a post–perhaps I will cover the issues involved in other ways, getting there piece by piece. But even though I won’t write the post I planned, I do want to talk about the words “White Supremacy.”

This series so far mostly is based on the history of the world leading into the history of the United States. But this post stems more from personal history–well, personal recent events. Though I will reference history.

NPR

I have been doing quite a lot of travelling recently–I’ll mention why later in this series, God willing–and as I travel, I like to listen to NPR. That’s “National Public Radio” for people reading this living outside the U.S.A.–it’s a bit like the BBC but less apolitical, more left-leaning (though NPR broadcasts a “BBC News Hour,” which I enjoy).

NPR has been talking quite a lot recently about race, racism, racial justice and so on. I’ve been listening, thinking, evaluating. “Are they saying something true or not?” is how my thinking goes. Sometimes I do the same sort of listening with Conservative talk radio. For whatever reason, I find this much more mentally engaging and interesting that listening to music–and when I drive, being mentally engaged helps fight off doziness.

Anyway, NPR has had on black artists talking about their perpectives on race, also Hispanics or Latinos (or “Latinx” is the term NPR uses quite often) talking about similar issues. And Asians talking about being Asian, economists talking about wealth disparities according to race, continual mention of COVID 19 outcomes being different according to race, and so on.

I listen and apply things I know to the conversations as part of evaluating the accuracy of what’s said. For example, let’s take on the issue of a higher percentage of black people getting sick with COVID. More black people live in cities than is typical for white people–and more use public transportation. There are historical reasons for that–a migration of black people away from the South in the mid-20th Century, seeking then-abundant manufacturing jobs in Northern cities, lead to black people living in cities at a higher frequency than white people. The public transportation systems in most U.S. cities were created in the 20th Century by generally left-leaning people who saw public transportation more enegy efficient (in 21st Century terms, as having a “lower carbon footprint,”) in addition to helping out disadvantaged people. So more black people, on average, ride busses or trains or subways to work or elsewhere than white people.

People living in crowded cities, traveling on crowded busses and subways, in close proximity to one another, are more likely to get sick. This must be a major aspect behind racial disparities in regard to COVID 19. It’s not the whole story–unequal healthcare coverage is there too as is the fact fewer black people in America’s cities work jobs where they can telecommute than white people living in the same cities. Note, I never heard any guest on NPR mention the role of public transportation, though they did mention healthcare and jobs. Perhaps someone did mention public transportation and I happened not to be listening at that moment, but I have heard many references to healthcare and types of jobs. Which is not wholly wrong, but is misleading.

So I often find shortcomings with NPR coverage. However, they are not totally wrong–sometimes they point out things I would not otherwise know anything about.

A Conversation About “White Supremacy”

Last night a male interviewer was talking with woman who offered strong opinions related to Critical Race Theory on NPR. It would have been so much more helpful to this post if I remembered her name, but I don’t. Besides, I am in general much more interested in what is being said than who is saying it. (I did a brief Intenet search for the interview and found a reference to Barbara Smith who wrote an article for The Nation, but I am not sure she was the person being interviewed last night.)

A protester holds up a sign during Black Lives Matter protests in New York City. (Ron Adar / Sipa via AP Images)

The woman was explaining why “systemic white supremacy” is a better term than “systemic racism.” She felt in effect that “systemic racism” doesn’t strike everyone as being as much of a serious issue than the term “systemic white superiority.” She also talked about the need for a sort of Marshall Plan to eliminate “white supremacy”–hundreds of billions of dollars of investment, if not even more than that, to combat the different outcomes that fall along racial lines (Barbara Smith wrote an article on this subject, for sure). A plan nobody would enact unless they really take this issue very seriously.

You may have noticed that I’m putting “white supremacy” in quotes every time I use it in reference to what the woman I heard speaking say. I’m not being sarcastic here. Sarcasm is very much unlike me–I’m Mr. Very Sincere. Not 100 percent of the time, but close.

The woman being interviewed wants to use a term for the purpose of getting an effect. The effect being to totally transform our society, which she reasons will not happen unless people take the issue with utter seriousness. Which will not happen unless we use sufficiently strong terminology. OK. I get what she’s saying. But there’s a problem with her reasoning.

Actual White Supremacy

In the list of people I referenced in last week’s article about Scientific Racism, you get to names like Georges Vacher de Lapouge, Madison Grant, and Lothrop Stoddard, who openly advocated things like keeping races separate, suppressing immigration, engaging in eugenics to weed out unfavorable characteristics (including racial-based eugenics), and whose writings inspired the Nazis to literally go out and slaughter those they deemed to be inferior.

Modern white supremacists have lost much of their power, but they still burn black churches, defile Jewish graves, long for a race war in which white people will triumph (in their imagination), and are a dangerous fringe movement. Yeah, not every white supremacist is a bomb-tossing lunatic. Some are more rational, calm, and deliberate…and are rationally, calmly, and deliberately planning for how white people will resume colonial control of the entire world and will suppress people of other races.

Historical white supremacy really did feed into some of the reasons why there are racial disparaties to this day. It’s what I had planned to talk about with the “Rise of White Supremacy” post. Segregation was a big deal and its effects are not over yet. Likewise lynching and other violence against black people. It was done systematically in the history of the United States. The U.S.A. has changed a lot, but not all the way. But even if it had totally changed, the effects of actual white supremacy from the past still linger in our society. But that is not the same as our society being a white supremacist nation now.

It is not the same to live in a society that has in some ways favored white people, sometimes deliberately, sometimes accidentally (as in the public transportation example I used) as it is to live in a white supremacist society. Because “white supremacy” means something and it isn’t what the woman I heard on NPR says it is. Ask someone who lived in Nazi Germany to explain, especially a Holcaust survivor–some are still alive today.

The Danger of Conflating Terms

I of course realize that surely the woman I heard interviewed must know that Nazi Germany is not like the U.S.A. in many important ways. Though perhaps she might indeed say we have the same illness the Nazis had, but only in a less virulent form.

But that’s not what I heard her say in the interview. In the interview, she said the term “white supremacy” was better becasue it would strike people as a more serious issue. Who knows, if confronted with my reaction to what she said, she might change her tune or explain more fully in a direction I didn’t grasp. But even if she did, I think she said something true for other people.

People are using “white supremacy” in our country today not because they believe we are exactly the same as true white supremacists like the Nazis–but because they want to achieve an effect of mobilizing people, rallying people to their cause.

Intellectually I have a problem with that related to word definitions. If we call the situation in the United States today–and other places in the world like the U.S.A.–a condition of “white supremacy,” what shall we call the people actually plotting to destroy all non-white races? Super-duper white supremacists? Actual, like, no-kidding white supremacists? The terminology gets problematic. But there’s worse.

The Danger of Overreach, D&D Hysteria as an Example

The most serious problem with semantic overreach is not that it leaves us devoid of terms to talk about real white supremacists. The real danger is while some people rally to the cause of fighting racism because of the term “white supremacy,” others are turned off by. They in effect become hardened against helping resolve the lingering effects of racism, more hardened than they otherwise would be. Through over-use of a phrase, many people poo poo the idea that there’s any problem to deal with at all.

It’s a bit like the Chic tract I read about Dungeons and Dragons years ago. It claimed every Dungeon Master was a Satanist. I had been a Dungeon Master myself, so I knew that was nonsense. Many other people saw the claim was nonsense, too. However, that doesn’t mean a game with references to magic, gods and goddesses, but no references to the God of the Bible might possibly have an effect of pointing a person in the direction of modern Paganism. But the effect would be subtle, not guaranteed, not direct. It’s an effect worth talking about and worth considering–worth countering even by particular Dungeon Masters I know who are Christians who do things like have quests who explore the Seven Deadly Sins (for example). It’s a situation that should neither be ignored, nor over-stated.

But by overreaching, almost everyone I know mocks the idea that D&D ever influenced anyone in the direction of modern Paganism. Yeah, there are still a few true believers, but the false information, the semantic overreach, effectively steered people away from seeing there’s any truth to any problem at all.

In fact, “every Dungeon Master is a Satanist” is more ridiculous than “the United States is a White Supremacist nation.” The U.S.A. in fact went through a phase that was strongly white supremacist, though of course not 100 percent.

Nonetheless, blanket declarations of “White Supremacy,” while convincing to some people, strike others as nonsense. So they “throw the baby out with the bathwater” and deny there’s any truth at all to systemic racism.

But I would say systemic racism is not fictional–it’s just subtle. Worth fighting, but not the only issue our society faces. Worth treating seriously, but it’s not wise to inflate it into something bigger than it is. Note, the biggest predictor of your income is not your race but your parent’s income and how they raised you–yes, whole generations are born into poverty in the United States and stay there, yes this often falls along racial lines. But it doesn’t always. Generational poverty among white people also exists. We should ask “why?”

Conclusion

To deal with real problems, we need to correctly identify what those problems are.

Overreach, claiming stuff many people will see as hokum–that runs the risk of strengthening the hand of actual white supremacists…which is why I’m against it. While at the same time, I’m against seeing racism broad enough to call “systemic” as hokum…

What are your thoughts?

I’m excited to join in the cover reveal of Operation Grendel by Daniel Schwabauer, who will be a guest writer here in October. His latest novel, releasing from Enclave Publishing in March 2021, is a standalone military sci-fi book and is available to pre-order in Limited-Edition Hardcover.

First the very cool cover, another of the great artistic works by Kirk DuoPonce.

And now the story:

It’s the war story he’s dreamed of. But the battle may cost him his mind.

Military journalist Raymin Dahl thinks he’s finally getting the story of a lifetime. Secret peace talks on a remote tropical moon are about to surrender five colonized worlds—and six hundred million civilians—to a ruthless enemy.

But when his commanding officer, Captain Ansell Sterling, is fatally wounded before the negotiations can begin, Dahl can no longer just report on the mission. He’s ordered to complete it. With help from the AI embedded in Sterling’s comms bracelet, Dahl must impersonate his commander—a Marine Corps hero and psychological operations expert.

However, Sterling’s AI may be luring him to surrender more than he realizes. And the mission Corporal Dahl thinks he’s running isn’t the only operation underway.

Yes, I’m interested, too. You may preorder the book in hardback, but if you’d like to wait, we may have an excerpt for a Fiction Friday in the near future.

If you have an Instagram account, you may want to share this cover and synopsis on your site. Be sure to include hashtags such as #militaryscifi #standalonebooks #preorder #coverlove #coverreveal #enclavepublishing #march2021 #danielschwabauer #speculativefiction #operationgrendel and #scifibooks.

Above all, tell any of your friends who are interested in science fiction, particularly military science fiction. The team at Enclave Publishing will be grateful, as will Operation Grendel‘s author, Dan Schwabauer.

IN OTHER NEWS, The ACFW Carol Awards have been announced. Congratulations to the Speculative Award winner, Brand of Light by Ronie Kendig; Enclave Publishing; Editor: Reagen Reed. Perhaps we can get Ronie to join us here as Spec Faith in the near future as well.

Technically Fall begins September 22, so I guess we’re starting this biannual contest a day early. But at long last, and in place of our Summer Challenge, Spec Faith brings you our traditional Writing Challenge!

Certainly 2020 has been the strangest year I’ve lived through. Nothing has seemed normal—from the impeachment (yes, that was this year, though it almost seems like a lifetime ago), the pandemic, church online, race riots, fires, hurricanes, on and on.

Perhaps there’s something within all these strange events that sparks a story idea. But that’s for writers—published or unpublshed, hobbyists or professionals—who wish to enter the challenge to decide.

As we have done in the past, Spec Faith will offer a prize for the winner of the 2020 Fall
Writing Challenge. Of course there’s also feedback from other Spec Faith visitors, which all entrants may enjoy, but there’s a $25 gift card from either Amazon or B&N for the winner. For readers, there are stories or story beginnings to enjoy. It’s all very win-win for all our visitors!

As a refresher, here’s how the 2020 Fall Writing Challenge works:

1. I’ll give a first line, and those who wish to accept the challenge will write what comes next—in 100 to 300 words, putting your entry into the comments section of this post.

“What comes next” may be the opening of a novel, a short story, or a completed piece of flash fiction—your choice.

In keeping with Spec Faith’s primary focus on the intersection of speculative fiction and the Christian faith, writers may wish to incorporate Christian elements or to write intentionally from a Christian worldview, but neither is required (largely because many entries will be the beginnings of stories, and may not yet reveal the direction they could go). Likewise, I’d expect speculative elements, or the suggestion of such, but entries will not be disqualified because of their omission.

1. Readers will give a thumbs up (NO THUMBS DOWN, PLEASE!) to the ones they like the most (unlimited number of thumbs up), and, if they wish, they may give a comment (please do!) to the various entries, identifying what elements particularly grabbed their attention or in what ways they can strengthen their writing.

I encourage such responses—it’s always helpful for entrants to know what they did right, what readers liked, and what they could have done to improve.

1. After the designated time, I’ll re-post the top three (based on the number of thumbs up they receive) and visitors will have a chance to vote in a poll for the one which they believe to be the best 2020 fall entry (one vote only).

2. The entry which receives the most votes will earn a $25 gift card (from either Amazon or Barnes and Noble). In the event of a tie, a drawing will be held between the top vote getters to determine the winner.

And now, the first line:

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.

Finally, those silly little details we all need to know:

• You must include the given first line without changing it. Changes to the prompt will disqualify an entry (things like verb tense or gender or POV).

• Your word count does not include this first line.

• You will have between now and 8:00 AM (Pacific time) this coming Monday, September 28, 2020, to post your challenge entries in the comments section.

• You may reply to entries and give thumbs up, this week and next. To have your thumbs up counted to determine the top three entries, mark your favorite entries before Monday, October 5, at 8:00 AM (Pacific time).

• Voting begins Monday, October 5, after the poll is posted.

Feel free to invite your friends to participate, either as writers or readers. The more entries and the more feedback, the better the challenge.

However, please note, the challenge is not a popularity contest. We want to give writers a chance to find out what readers actually think of their writing. Consequently, please do not ask your social media followers to give your selection a vote unless they read the other entries as well. Thanks for making this little exercise a valuable help to all who enter.

This post was supposed to be about white supremacy, but there’s something that we need to discuss first. Scientific racism.

Indroduction

First, let’s orient ourselves to the subject a bit–as this series has already shown, the belief in races as we know them simply didn’t exist in the ancient world–which doesn’t mean that ancient writers didn’t show their preference for themselves over others or engage in stereotypes about various ethnicities. But it means they had no concept of European, African, Asian or other sweeping generalizations about all of humanity that we call “races.”

I’ve already mentioned in a previous post the late Middle Ages had begun to think of Shem, Ham, and Japheth as being the fathers of Asians, Africans, and Europeans (though the Bible doesn’t show them so neatly divided by place), so that was the proto-racial concept Europeans started out with, one not entirely well developed or thought about all that much, at the beginning of the scientific revolution that began a bit before the Enlightenment.

Racism in Science

Hey, the ugly truth is that early science–some might want to dismiss it as “pseudo-science,” which is only somewhat fair–is what created racism.

But wait, didn’t I say in a previous post that slavery created racism? In fact, I was a bit inconsistent in my terminology. Yes, slavery created a racial bias against the people held in slavery, just as the reality of fighting Native Americans created a concept of the person being fought, the “Indian.” These realities created biases, but biases themselves were not enough to create the idea there exist races of humans that span the globe.

My previous posts have had the purpose of showing the order of actual events, which is different from what many modern people presume. Racist Europeans did not set out to enslave Africans because they believed they were inferior. The order of events was actually that the first indentured servants from Africa were in Colonial America in 1619. Slavery didn’t beome legal until 1661. The first Enlightenment treatise to use the word “race” came out in 1684. But scientific explanations of race didn’t begin to be systematically dismissive of non-European races until 1799.

First came economic exploitation, then legal discrimination, then came the scientific system of what I called “early racism” in my previous post, then came de-humanizing “scientific” systems of racism.

Over time, such scientific (or pseudoscientific) systems would increasingly argue in favor of justifying slavery and colonialism. But at first, they were more intrested in simply explaining where humans of differing types came from.

Note that as they created their theories, these philosophers and scientists wrote during an era of European de facto dominance over all sides of the Atlantic (and increasing power elsewhere). But the theories were produced in the name of science–of advancing knowledge and understanding. And in fact, without the urge to classify and categorize on a global scale, we would not have racism at all. Racism is a product of the science of the past.

Just to be clear, I am not anti-science. Science can be a very good thing. But it is subject to abuse, as is any human-weilded power. The urge to classify in a scientific way was key to creating a sense that “races” are real and really matter. Which was key to seeing some races as inferior to others. But that science didn’t happen in a vacuum.

Note in addition to the influence of slavery and colonialism I already mentioned, the discovery of non-European lands fed into science in ways it’s hard for a modern person to appreciate. New lands, new animals, new plants, new products of unfamiliar civilizations, and yes, unfamiliar human beings, all spurred on an already-developing urge to classify and analyze. The very notion that there are “races” that span the globe and define all human beings was invented during the Enlightenment and was perpetuated in the name of science–and is still justified by science to a small degree up to the present.

Monogenism Versus Polygenism

Let’s define an important pair of terms in the context of human origins. A “monogenist” holds that all human beings come from a common source. A “polygenist” says human beings sprung up from separate, unrelated sources.

Generally, monogenism is less favorable to seeing races as completely different than polygenism. Yes, the monogenist has to answer the question of where other so-called races come from, if all races started as one. Sometimes the explanations of how other races came to be are pretty insulting to non-Europeans–oh and let’s be clear here: Just as Europeans should get the credit for creating modern science (sure, based on antecedents derived in part from other cultures, including Islamic and Chinese culture), they should also get the blame for creating racism.

Polygenism was the position of people who had the harshest condemnation of other races–because they claimed the non-European races were not as human. Though in fact, some polygenists saw non-European races in relatively benign terms. The details get complex.

The Bible is staunchly monogenist about human origins. Modern science is monogenist, too, though that wasn’t always the case. Note a minority of modern scientists still defend polygenism.

Some Key Racial Thinkers During the Enlightenment

Francois Bernier gave us the first essay that first divided human beings into races in 1684. He counted all Europeans, West Asians, North Africans, and Native Americans as one race, Sub-Saharan Africans as another, East Asians as another, and the Sami/Lapplander people of Scandinavia as a 4th. His system roughly followed the Japheth, Ham, Shem division of three races, with some weirdly savage attacks on Sami people as half-animal added on, talking about them as being worse than any other race…a strange opinion that no other racial theorist continued after Bernier.

Robert Boyle (1627-1691), better known as an early chemist, argued common descent from Adam and Eve and unity of the human race.

Richard Bradley in 1721 wrote the Philosophical Account of the Works of Nature in which he argued for 5 races. White Europeans with beards; white men in America without beards (meaning native Americans; men with copper color skin, small eyes and strait black hair (Asians); blacks with strait black hair, and blacks with curly hair. He did not set a specific heirarchy among the races.

Georges-Louis Leclerc, Comte de Buffon (1707-1788) was a monogenist. He held to a degeneration theory. That is, all races where once white, but a variety of environmental factors changed them to other colors. In particular, he believed the harsh sunlight in Africa turned black people dark. He actually believed that given the right environmental conditions, people of other races would revert to being white…which is a sentiment that definitely put Europeans on the top of an order of races, assuming Europeans are the default for “human” and everyone else is abberant. But his system did not assume inferiority of other races.

In his 1734 book Sketches on the History of Man, Scottish lawyer Henry Home, Lord Kames (1696–1782) was the first major figure to argue as a polygenist. He believed God had created different races on Earth in separate regions. That there were co-Adams that God created that simply are not mentioned in the Bible (note that this isn’t too different from how I imagine God could have created aliens…).

The book is mostly about a belief in developing human progress over time, human cultural evolution. Kames assumed humans are continually getting better, improving, that there is a natural movement, a “progress” of the human race that starts at hunter-gatherer, moves up to herdsman, then develops agriculture. In his system, Native Americans of the North America were at the bottom of the development chain, Africans were at the herder stage, and Europeans and Asians were at the advanced stages.

The idea that whatever is coming in the future is good and progress is inevitable probably was more influential that Kames’s ideas on race–certainly modern Progressives tend to see society as getting better and better, which it doesn’t really do if you ask me.

I’d like to quote Kames extensively–even though I disagree with much of what he said, I find it interesting. But space doesn’t allow me to. He spends a great deal of time explaining why after all, Scottish people Are The Best Ever, echoing ancient world ethnocentrism even as he hammered out new racial theory. He did consider black people to be inferior, we should note, but his polygenism was relatively benign compared to what would come later.

Carl Linnaeus in 1767 came out with Systema Naturae, the base document of modern biological science, the one that laid out the system of order, genus, and species all science uses today. He divided humans into four races (four varieties), influenced by ancient world theories of four humors. He said there were 4 races dominated by 4 humors. Americanus—choleric, Europeanus—sanguine, Asiaticus—melancholic, Africanus—phlegmatic. His system is kind of discriminatory because of a preference for being sanguine, but treated all humans as human.

Benjamin Rush (1745–1813), was a signer of the US Declaration of Independence and a monogenist. He believed being black was caused by an inherited skin disease that could be cured over time. He was against treating black people badly, but was also against spreading the disease via interracial marriage. We’d say that was racist and it literally was racist–but it was not the sort of racism that justified slavery or considered black people sub-human.

Samuel Stanhope Smith (1751–1819) was an American Presbyterian minister. His essay on the Causes of Variety of Complexion and Figure in the Human Species in 1787 argued in effect black skin is a sort of giant freckle and no indication of significant racial differences. Which by explaining black people as defective somehow certainly is racist in a way–but it is literally true that a natural darker spot on a white person, a freckle, is a place with more melanin, and having more melanin defines darker-skinned people. So Smith was actually correct in identifying what makes some people darker than others.

Post Enlightenment Racial Thought (Increasingly Hardcore Racist)

Charles White (1728–1813), 1799 Account of the Regular Gradation of Man, produced the first of what I would consider a genuine racist theory. He was a polygenist. He gave the first clear and unambiguous argument that whites and Negroes were separate species and Negroes were inferior by nature. He actually argued, long before Darwin came around, that Africans descended from gorillas–as opposed to white people, who did not. Yeah, that horrible, horrible idea. It came from this guy.

Christoph Meiners, polygenist, held to a multitude of races in which Slavs were not considered fully European and Celts were the noblest race. Weirdly Meiners was German and not Celt, so he defied the rule of standard ethnocentrism. He made lots of sweeping racial generalizations about black people, Indians, Middle Easterners, ranking them in order. His most important book was the 1815 Outline of the History of Mankind.

Rev. Richard Furman in 1822 published his Exposition of the Views of the Baptists Relative to the Coloured Population of the United States. He used the Bible to defend slavery and was in fact a monogenist who conflated the curse on Canaan into a curse on Ham. And since Africans are decendants of Ham in his view, they were worthy of slavery. His work was a hugely popular in the pre-Civil War South. Note that he personally was anti-slavery as an impoverished young man, but then became wealthy and a slave owner, then flipped to becoming an apologist for slavery after it was making him money personally. I’m not making that up.

Georges Cuvier (1769–1832), the French naturalist and zoologist, influenced scientific polygenism and scientific racism. Cuvier believed there were three distinct races: the Caucasian (white), Mongolian (yellow) and the Ethiopian (black). He did believe they were distinct species, but didn’t rank them in order as far as I know. Still, the idea that humans represent separate species is damaging all by itself.

In Crania Americana (1839) Samuel Morton contributed to the new science of “Craniometry” and argued for racial superiority based on brain capacity. He argued white brains are the biggest, Negroes are smallest, and Native Americans are in the middle. His results have been shown faulty in modern times–besides, among humans the exact size of your brain is not directly linked to intelligence, baring diseases in which a significant portion of the brain is missing.

Measuring skulls…Image source: Socialistworker.co.uk

Diseases and Peculiarities of the Negro Race by Samuel Cartwright (1851), argued slaves only ran away because of “Drapetomania”—that healthy black people enjoyed being slaves and they had to therefore be mentally ill if they wanted to escape. Like Furman, his work was hugely popular in the antebellum South.

Arthur Schopenhauer (1788–1860), better known as a philosopher on other matters, argued the “white races” were superior because they had to work hard to survive rigorous Northern climates. Though he admired the ancient Hindus and Egyptians.

An Essay on the Inequality of the Human Races (1855) French aristocrat and writer Arthur de Gobineau (1816–1882), argued for complete white supremacy. Proposed 3 races, white, black, and yellow, and said if any black or yellow man had intelligence, it was because of interbreeding with white people. Believed interracial marriage would mostly dilute white superiority and destroy civilization. He directly argued that white people needed to suppress other races.

Note that Charles Darwin’s Origin of the Species came out in 1859. And while I do blame Darwinism for a number of ills in modern society, Darwin himself did not specifically address the issue of human races in his signature book and when he did talk about it in later writings, he was not himself a hardcore racist. But Darwinism added fuel to the racial theorists fires. Because prior to this time, polygenism was broadly attacked by the Bible-believing public as not consistent with the Bible–and polygenism was the idea most supportive of racism. Though of course there were racist monogenists like Furman.

After Darwinism, the racial theorists felt increasingly unencumbered to really pour out more and more racist ideas.

Post-Darwinist Racism

Clémence Royer who could perhaps be seen as a feminist icon, also was a racist. In translating the Origin of the Species into French in 1862, she wrote a preface that the races are “not distinct species” but “quite unequal varieties.” She claimed that natural selection made it clear that “superior races are destined to supplant inferior ones.” In effect, she applied Social Darwinism to racial theory. Because species survive based on being more competitive, clearly Europeans are superior to other types of human beings, because these particular human beings were demonstrating superiority by conquering other peoples around the world. (Note that in his book The Descent of Man in 1871, Darwin would combat how his theory was taken to justify racism by arguing for monogenism.)

Carl Vogt (1817–1895) in his 1864 book Lectures of Man he claimed the differences between white people and “Negroes” are greater than those between two species of ape. That supposedly proves that Negroes are a separate species from whites.

Georges Vacher de Lapouge (1854–1936), a theoretician of eugenics, who published in 1899 L’Aryen et son rôle social (1899 – “The Aryan and his social role”). In this book, he classified humanity into various, hierarchized races, spanning from the “Aryan white race, dolichocephalic,” to the “brachycephalic,” “mediocre and inert race, best represented by Southern European, Catholic peasants.” Between these, Vacher de Lapouge identified the “Homo europaeus” (Teutonic, Protestant, etc.), the “Homo alpinus” (Auvergnat, Turkish, etc.), and finally the “Homo mediterraneus” (Neapolitan, Andalus, etc.) Jews were brachycephalic like the Aryans, according to Lapouge; but exactly for this reason he considered them to be dangerous; they were the only group, he thought, threatening to displace the Aryan aristocracy. Vacher de Lapouge became one of the leading inspirators of Nazi antisemitism and Nazi racist ideology. (Note how the category of “white” is getting smaller in 1899 that it had been before–contrary to what Critical Race Theorists say.)

Madison Grant (1865–1937) adopted the three-race European populace model, but transliterated la race nordique into “The Nordic race” based upon his racial classification theory, popular in the 1910s and 1920s. Madison Grant’s The Passing of the Great Race (1916) as “the most influential tract of American scientific racism” according to Stephen Jay Gould.

Lothrop Stoddard published many books against what he saw as the peril of immigration, his most famous being The Rising Tide of Color Against White World-Supremacy in 1920. In this book he presented a racist view focusing concern about the coming population explosion among the “colored” peoples of the world and the way in which “white world-supremacy” was being lessened in the wake of World War I and the collapse of colonialism. Nordic, Alpine, and Mediterranean were European sub-groups he used, with Nordic being the highest.

Why Worse and Worse?

Note there are a lot of post-Darwin racists I didn’t mention. So many–many of who favored eugenics, getting rid of bad genes. For them, the genes of other races…but still, even with what I included, it’s not hard to see that scientific and pseudo-scientific racist theories became harsher and harsher over time and as a general rule, created more categories, though of course there were exceptions to the rule.

Why?

I think I already said why in my last post. As the concept of universal human rights became more popular and more accepted, how could a person justify their position at the top of a pyramid of power? Racial theorists justified it by inventing systems in which a world-wide system of races exist and upon which their particular group sat at the very top of the order. The order was supposedly meritorious. “Nordic” white people are the most dominant because they are racially superior. Anyone else is inferior, by degrees that cut across Europeans to all peoples in the world, putting Africans at the very bottom.

But note Europeans had the power first–then they justified it. And even as some Europeans were justifying their power with racial theories, other Europeans firmly held to the monogenist idea that all humans have a common origin. That “all men are created equal.” Even while at the same time racial theories became increasingly hateful and exclusionary.

What Stopped This?

The Nazis were the result of the radical racial theories of their time–theories that were not necessarily German. They carried out what the extreme racists believed…and most people, all around the world, reacted in horror to the results radical racism produced. Thank God.

So the excesses of the Nazis convinced most people they were wrong, that all racism was wrong. Not that racism is dead, but it has changed and I doubt will ever be the same. Again, thank God.

Conclusion

So were you aware of the arc of “scientific” racism? That it generally got worse and worse? That Darwinism added fuel to the fire? That it was not in fact common to say some people of European descent are not actually white until after 1850s or so?

What are your thoughts on this subject?

It all started when Santa returned for Christmas 1992, and gave me a copy of the twelfth (at the time) cassette album of Adventures in Odyssey episodes. Focus on the Family had just polished up its audio drama series with a new theme version, and likely some other production changes.¹

I’d grown to love the series. These twelve standalone episodes, each themed after a specific biblical virtue, were no exception.

The album’s first episode was called simply “You Gotta Be Wise.” I’ll describe its importance in just a moment. Because it was just this past week I realized, to my shock, that without this story—and the one on the cassette’s other side—I might not have written my first book.

Of course, I’ve already written how this fantastical Christian-made audio drama has influenced my views of faith and fantasy. Back then, I wasn’t thinking of specific episodes. Mainly I recalled the overall series’s delightful blend of imagination and truth, thanks to flawed yet true heroes who’ve adventured in the fictional town of Odyssey for more than thirty years. But more recently, I was preparing two podcast episodes about my new book The Pop Culture Parent. And I happened to mention this specific Odyssey influence.

Here’s the original “It All Started When…” cassette album, first released in 1992! (At first this was album 12, which made little sense because the next album, “At Home and Abroad,” included stories that aired before the stories in this album. Later the Odyssey team reordered the albums.)

Episode 179: ‘You Gotta Be Wise’

“You Gotta Be Wise,” written by Paul McCusker, likely isn’t remembered by fans as a groundbreaking story. It wasn’t like the one where Mr. Whittaker tested an afterlife program on the Imagination Station. Or the eleven-episode arc in which Dr. Blackgaard tried to take Whit’s End.

Instead, in this simple tale, newspaper editor and dad Dale Jacobs learns that his daughter, Robyn, has a new music fandom.

Robyn has just bought a new cassette of her own, “As Crusty As They Wanna Be.” This new album was just released by Odyssey gang-turned-rock-band The Bones of Wrath. Dale finds her listened to this antique(?) media in her bedroom. We hear its distant, squalling racket.

“It’s good stuff,” she says simply, and hands her dad the headphones.

“Yow!” Dale yelps, and yanks them off. “It sounds like a cross between a jackhammer and—several cats being scorched with a flamethrower.”

I can quote those lines from memory. This is despite the fact that, as I recall, the original cassette suffered damage. As all you internet meme–affirmed Nineties Kids can attest, back then you had to ensure the tape ribbon itself didn’t break, or else leak out from the cassette casing (forcing you to roll it back in with ink pen that had the exact dimension of pen cap). Said damage may have added to a low-level Burnett mystique about “You Gotta Be Wise.” But it also dealt directly with this mysterious thing called “rock and roll music.”

By the story’s end, Robyn Jacobs of course must learn to practice wiser media discernment. But … even listeners aged eight through twelve also join Dale as he deals with this popular cultural work, and more importantly, how it affects his relationship with his daughter.

Not just rock-and-roll rules, but relationship

Dale even confronts a group of outraged parents who in their zealotry arrange a bonfire. “You want to burn the tapes?” he exclaims. It’s no joke. Back then, real churches and some fringe ministries actually held such combustion-oriented events. Possibly they thought they were following the biblical example of the Ephesians in Acts 19:19. “You Gotta Be Wise” is kind to these reactionary parents, yet holds them up for examination. The story also portrays Rodney Rathbone (and his scheming dad-manager, Bart) for gentle ridicule.

Dale isn’t on the tape-burners’ side. Instead, he wants to navigate free-speech issues while teaching his daughter. But first he learns that she’s chased Rodney’s autograph and has bought their flames-and-skeleton poster. Dale raises his voice, makes demands, and tells her to go to her room.

“You Gotta Be Wise” isn’t about rock music or even just media discernment. It’s about this simple parent/child relationship.

Near the end, Dale and Robyn finally unite in Dale’s office. (He’s entered her world; now she enters his.) They reconcile.

Because he’s older, Dale goes first: “I’m sorry for overreacting about the tape and the poster. I was wrong.”

“And I was wrong for buying the tape and the poster in the first place,” Robyn replied. “I wasn’t being very—wise.”

“But you were right about something,” Dale continues. “I should have listened to this tape before offering an opinion about it. I should have listened to it with you, so we could talk about it together and decide whether it’s good or not.”

This careful, simple story surely helped build my own curiosity about parenting and popular culture, and in such a biblical way.

“It All Started When…”, Adventures in Odyssey album 13, revised version.

Episode 180: ‘Isaac the Pure’

Yesterday I re-listened to that episode. In fact, I listened to the full album. That’s how I found my second surprise: the cassette’s other side had another Odyssey episode that also sparked early biblical development on discernment issues.

In “Isaac the Pure,” another McCusker story, nice-kid Isaac Morton is disturbed by dirty jokes. (We only hear about these.) When he mentions this at Whit’s End, Mr. Whittaker starts to tell Isaac about biblical purity, then is distracted. This leaves Isaac to his own mechanistic devices. He’s already the first kid to give all the correct answers in Sunday school, and is prone to overthinking moral principles. So Isaac determines the quickest way to build his own purity culture is: get rid of impure things. He starts with his family’s magazines, and prompts his exasperated dad to wonder why his moralistic son is throwing away his entire collection of National Geographic copies.

Isaac sincerely asks, “Have you seen those pictures from Africa, Dad?”

From there, Isaac is left to purge his own room: toys, books, magazines, and Disney Read-Along Records (up to and including a version of Bambi). “Who knows how this stuff might influence me in weak moments?” Isaac wonders aloud to his friend Sam.

Of course, before long Isaac pursues things to their logical end and determines: (1) Isaac is not made impure just by impure things, but by impure people; (2) so he must also avoid Sam; (3) Isaac is made impure by an impure world; (4) so he must stay in his room all day, with the lone exception of school and only then because his parents make him go.

Of course, Isaac must learn a very specific teaching—and object lesson by way of a restored clock—thanks to Mr. Whittaker.

Now available from New Growth Press. Perfect for your family, Sunday school, or parenting class.

And I learned an important lesson, too. Purity doesn’t start on the outside, because we follow rules, purge “impure” items, or refuse to associate with particular friends or places. Only a Pharisee (or a well-meaning, Pharisaical child) would think that way. Instead, Jesus said purity is a matter of the heart. As Mr. Whittaker says, Jesus changes us from the inside-out, and not the outside-in.

Thanks, Odyssey team, for inspiring The Pop Culture Parent

I’m not the only author of The Pop Culture Parent. Instead, I’m blessed to share credit with my friends Ted Turnau and Jared Moore.  Of course, it’s actually multiple teachers who contribute to any book. and in this instance, I can happily credit writer Paul McCusker, Phil Lollar (writer/director and voice of Dale Jacobs), and the entire Adventures in Odyssey production team as my long-distance teachers. God bless ’em. They helped start me on this quest to understand popular culture and parenting.

To be sure, my own parents, plus hosts of pastors and biblical phrases also helped. But sometimes it takes more than a nonfiction sermon, textbook, or even Bible verse to help us learn virtues. Sometimes it takes simple, non-epic stories, about a parent and child wrestling with a rock album, or about an overzealous boy with his own purity culture, to make these gospel truths come alive in our imaginations.

Photo credit: E. Stephen Burnett. This building is basically Whit’s End, and it’s located in Georgetown, Texas, and thou shalt not miss with my headcanon.

I wanted to chuck the book, but it belonged to my friend. I wanted to quit reading, at least, but my friend promised me the story would get better. And he was right. Had he not convinced me, I would have missed out on one of my favorite series—Stephen Donaldson’s The Chronicles Of Thomas Covenant The Unbeliever. In truth, the main character acted heinously, and I didn’t want to read about him.

First, the protagonist, Thomas Covenant, was a sick, sad man. He had leprosy, a disease that few understood and fewer tolerated. He was isolated from society, and to a degree, isolated from himself because his illness destroyed his nerve endings, robbing him of the ability to feel. But one day, he fell into a parallel world where he was no longer sick. Believing that what he was experiencing was not real, he did a horrible thing. He raped a girl who had befriended him.

See why I wanted to chuck the book? Thomas Covenant was not someone I liked, and I really didn’t care about what happened to him. I know of people who, in fact, did stop reading that book and never picked it up again.

The point is simple: to be believable, characters need flaws, but if their flaws overshadow their higher nature, readers may not care enough to continue on the reading journey with them.

As Angela Ackerman put it in an article for Writer’s Digest, “When Flaws Go Too Far: Avoiding Unlikable Characters,”

There is a tipping point for flaws, however. A bit too much snark or insensitive internal narrative and the character slips into unlikable territory. Too much surliness, negativity, secretiveness or an overblown reaction and the reader will disconnect, frustrated by character’s narrow range.

I’ve had occasion more than once to read a novel written in first person—which is fine, except I didn’t care for the protagonist. The character was either too whiny or too morose or complained too much or thought ill of his colleagues all the time or was focused on her own cares to a point of distraction. Especially in a novel in which the reader must live in the character’s head for upwards of three hundred pages, an unlikable protagonist is a problem.

But a story is about character development—how a person changes. Does the young boy learn responsibility, does the woman allow herself to love again, will the hero find the strength within to over come? These are storylines which demand a character grows or at least admits failure.

The point is, the story begins with a young boy who is irresponsible, a woman who is cold and stand-offish, a weak person thrust into a situation requiring strength. In short, the story starts with a character in need because of his flaw.

How, then, is a writer to portray this flaw without making it fatal for the book? How can a broken, warped, imperfect character still be someone who engages readers?

First, the character’s flaw must have an understandable reason for existence. Who hurt the character or failed him or bullied him? Who used her or betrayed her or demanded more than she could handle? If readers understand why a character acts badly, often they will be inclined to tolerate more. (Which, by the way, Stephen Donaldson did in the Thomas Covenant books).

Furthermore, if the character’s flaw is a result of his own suffering, readers may be willing to forgive him and hope for change.

Showing the character’s backstory provides his motive, including the motive for his flawed actions or angsty attitudes. The key to using what happened in the past in this way is to treat it like any other bit of backstory. It must not be delivered up front or in lengthy paragraphs or presented in a speech. It must serve the plot. It must only be delivered when readers are ready and want to know what happened before. (For more information about backstory see posts here: Backstory).

Besides giving reasons for a character’s flaws, another way an author can keep those from overshadowing a character is by counterbalancing them with winsome traits.

Ackerman explains:

no matter how impatient, uptight, angsty or spoiled your character is, hint to the reader that there’s more beneath the surface. A small action or internal observation can show the character in a positive light and should happen in the first scene (frequently referred to as a Save The Cat moment.) It can be a positive quality, like a great sense of humor, or a simple act that shows something redeeming about the character.

In the fantasy trilogy by Patrick Carr, The Staff & The Sword fantasy, the story opens in book one, A Cast of Stones, with a character, Errol Stone, who is drunk. He, in fact, is the main character, and he isn’t just drunk on that one day. He happens to be the town drunk. How is a character with such an obvious and dominating flaw someone readers care about?

First Carr showed other characters—ones who were in respected positions in the story—who sympathized with Errol Stone. They even did all they could to help him. Some provided him with work, some allowed him a place to sleep off his drunk.

They also acknowledged his value and identified an area in which he excelled beyond anyone else in the village. In other words, readers see through their eyes that Errol has value.

Further, Errol Stone suffers beatings at the hand of the local pater, ostensibly to cure him of his public drunkenness. Very soon it’s clear that Errol is suffering unfair ill treatment.

Fourth, Errol faces a life-and-death surprise attack and shows by his wit and agility that he has skills a reader can admire. The reader learns there’s more to him than his addiction.

This latter hints at one of the points Ackerman mentions: if a character faces hardship, readers are more willing to be patient with his bad behavior. However, his reaction to hardship must give some reason to believe he can conquer what he’s up against.

If the hero has a rough road ahead, the reader makes allowances for his behavior, as long as he doesn’t wallow in gloom and doom. It isn’t hardship that creates empathy, it’s how a character behaves despite that hardship, giving us a window into who he really is.

Errol Stone not only survived an attack, but the next day his quick thinking and decisive action saved the lives of two other men. Clearly he was more than the town drunk, and I for one was cheering for him to overcome on many levels. Patrick Carr had made sure that his flawed protagonist didn’t fail by being too flawed.