As I wrote yesterday, I just released a new supernatural conspiracy novel about the historical origin of the book of Revelation titled, Tyrant: Rise of the Beast. That means I could no longer avoid the perpetual debate over Bible prophecy interpretation. But as a researcher of ancient literature, I think I can offer some insight for Easter into the literary and poetic nature of the Biblical prophecy that is so often lost in translation to our modern western scientific mind.

I previously explained that we misinterpret the book of Revelation if we do not approach it as a text that is rooted in an ancient Jewish context of meaning. And that context is saturated in the imagery of Old Testament prophetic imagination, not modern newspapers.

Yesterday I looked at the imagery of a collapsing universe in Revelation. The modern evangelical mindset often literalizes the destruction of the earthly land and heavenly host, and misinterprets it as the end of the space-time universe, something the biblical authors never intended. Cosmic catastrophes are a biblical metaphor for God’s judgment of earthly rulers and the spiritual powers behind them, as well as a metaphor for covenantal change.

In the spirit of Easter, I want to take a look at a follow up to that judgment on sin, namely the new heavens and new earth.

Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth, for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away.¹

Here, as elsewhere, John is not saying anything new to his readers. They would be very familiar with the promised new heavens and earth from Isaiah.

“For behold, I create new heavens and a new earth …”²

In our modern 21^st century minds we cannot help but picture our physical universe being completely replaced. But while that physical result may be in our future, it is not primarily what the prophecy about a new heavens and earth is about. Here is what it is about: The New Covenant replacing the Old Covenant is figuratively depicted as a new heaven and earth replacing the first heaven and earth in Revelation.

First, a closer look at Isaiah 65 yields a new heavens and earth that is covenantal rather than physical. The image that the “wolf and lamb shall graze together” is a metaphor for the peace that God’s kingdom brings. But this is a peace that occurs in a new heavens and earth where there is still old age, death, the curse of sin, and even the serpent.

You read that right. Now see for yourself in the Scripture.

No more shall there be in it an infant who lives but a few days, or an old man who does not fill out his days, for the young man shall die a hundred years old, and the sinner a hundred years old shall be accursed… and dust shall be the serpent’s food.³

How is it that the ancient Hebrew could envision a new heavens and earth with the elements of the old heaven and earth still around? Because their notion of “heavens and earth” was primarily covenantal. That is, the concept of heavens and earth was a cultural meme that expressed God’s covenantal order through cosmic language.

When God established his covenant with Moses after the Red Sea crossing, it was described using the language of creation.

I am the Lord your God, who stirs up the sea… And I have put my words in your [Moses’] mouth and covered you in the shadow of my hand, establishing the heavens and laying the foundations of the earth, and saying to Zion, ‘You are my people.’”⁴

God establishing his covenant with his people was the equivalent of creating the heavens and earth. His covenant is the spiritual cosmos to the Jews like the physical cosmos would be to us.

If “heavens and earth” is a biblical metaphor for the covenant, then the destruction of the earthly form of that covenant, the temple, would be described as the destruction of the heavens and earth. Notice in this Scripture how the destruction of the first temple in 587 BC is described as an inversion of the creation in Genesis 1 by returning to the pre-creation chaos of Genesis 1:1 (“Without form and void.”)

I looked on the earth, and behold, it was without form and void; and to the heavens, and they had no light. I looked on the mountains, and behold, they were quaking… I looked, and behold, there was no man, and all the birds of the air had fled… For this the earth shall mourn, and the heavens above be dark.”⁵

So the new heaven and new earth language in Revelation is a beautiful picture of the spiritual reality of the New Covenant kingdom of God that replaces the Old Covenant “heavens and earth.” A real kingdom, but a spiritual one that exists now within our cursed world (Isaiah 65). And it builds toward the eventual elimination of sin, death, and suffering by God’s own intervention (Revelation 21:4).

This is why the prophet Haggai predicts the coming New Covenant through Yahweh saying, “Yet once more, in a little while, I will shake the heavens and the earth” (Haggai 2:6).

The writer of Hebrews explains that that shaking of heavens and earth is not a literal destruction of the physical cosmos, but rather an image of an imperfect Old Covenant Jerusalem and temple being destroyed and replaced by a perfect New Covenant with new heavenly Jerusalem and temple in Jesus that will never be shaken again. Hallelujah!

This phrase, “Yet once more,” indicates the removal of things that are shaken—that is, things that have been made—in order that the things that cannot be shaken may remain. Therefore let us be grateful for receiving a kingdom that cannot be shaken.⁶

Of course, this is only the tip of the holy mountain of biblical symbolism used by John in the book of Revelation. If you want to dive into more exploration of this ancient Hebrew worldview, I’ve written a companion book for the novel. It’s called End Times Bible Prophecy: It’s Not What They Told You.

Check out the novel Tyrant: Rise of the Beast here.

I just released a new supernatural conspiracy novel about the historical origin of the book of Revelation titled, Tyrant: Rise of the Beast, which drew me into the eternal debate over Bible prophecy interpretation. I want to share a little something of the power and beauty of Biblical imagination that I have learned in the process.

If we want to approach Revelation properly, we must understand that its interpretation is rooted in an ancient Jewish context of meaning, not our modern one. We must seek to understand the text as its original writer intended. And that context is saturated in the imagery of Old Testament prophecy.

The apostle John draws so heavily from the Old Testament that scholars claim it has more Old Testament allusions and echoes than any other New Testament book. If we want to “unveil” the hidden beauty and meaning of God’s Word (revelation means unveiling), we must look back to the Old Testament first, before we start exegeting current newspapers looking for modern correspondences. And when you do look back instead of forward, wow, what an unveiling of Jesus Christ occurs!

One of the primary purposes of Revelation, stated right up front by John, is to describe God’s judgment on those who pierced Christ.

Behold, he is coming with the clouds, and every eye will see him, even those who pierced him, and all tribes of the land will wail on account of him.¹

This is particularly relevant for Good Friday meditation because it gives the believer hope that Christ will be vindicated against those who rejected him as messiah and crucified him. There is judgment on sin before resurrection and final glory.

But what does this judgment look like? Many Christians read Revelation so literally as to assume that this involves the physical destruction of the world. They read passages like the sixth seal and it seems so obvious:

When he opened the sixth seal, I looked, and behold, there was a great earthquake, and the sun became black as sackcloth, the full moon became like blood, and the stars of the sky fell to the earth as the fig tree sheds its winter fruit when shaken by a gale. The sky vanished like a scroll that is being rolled up, and every mountain and island was removed from its place.²

To our modern non-Hebrew eyes this reads like scientific cosmic catastrophes. Meteorites pounding the earth, the sky being sucked into a black hole, and all the mountains flattened and all the islands gone.

And Jesus seems to affirm this when, at his Olivet Discourse, he says that “Immediately after the tribulation of those days the sun will be darkened, and the moon will not give its light, and the stars will fall from heaven, and the powers of the heavens will be shaken.”³

To us, this all reads like the end of the space-time universe. Except it’s not.

John’s language is nothing new to his ancient Jewish audience. They were very familiar with this kind of imagery from the Old Testament prophets who used extreme cosmic catastrophes all the time as spiritual metaphors to describe the fall of earthly rulers and the spiritual principalities and powers behind them.

In fact, in this very passage of Revelation 6, John draws directly from Isaiah. The prophet describes the fall of Edom and the surrounding nations to the Babylonians around 587 BC with the same exact terms as does John.

All the host of heaven shall rot away, and the skies roll up like a scroll. All their host shall fall, as leaves fall from the vine, like leaves falling from the fig tree. For my sword has drunk its fill in the heavens; behold, it descends for judgment upon Edom, upon the people I have devoted to destruction.⁴

But here’s the point: this all happened in 587 BC. You read that right.

When the Babylonians destroyed Edom, the stars obviously didn’t literally fall to the earth. Remember, if you believe this is literal, then you would have to believe that literal stars fell to our literal earth. But stars are suns like our own. One star/sun alone would have burned up the entire galaxy on its way to collision with earth. So no one takes that literally (meteors would be a non-literal interpretation). The sky didn’t literally roll up like a scroll (or black hole) in 587 BC, because if it did, it would have been the end of the space-time universe.

Isaiah is describing the fall of earthly rulers and their spiritual powers behind them. He says so in Isaiah 34:12: “[Edom’s] nobles—there is no one there to call it a kingdom, and all its princes shall be nothing.”

In the Bible, the sun, moon and stars (“heavenly host”) were symbolic of earthly rulers and their spiritual powers behind them (Judg 5:19-20). When God destroyed Babylon through the Medes in 539 BC, he described it as the “destruction of the whole earth” (Isa 13:5), the “darkening of the sun, moon and stars” (v. 10), and the earth and heavens being “shaken from their place” (v. 11). Obviously, the whole earth wasn’t destroyed in 539 BC, nor were the earth and heavens shaken from their place, otherwise, none of us would be here. This same exact language that John uses in Revelation is not end of the space-time world, but a spiritual metaphor for the fall of earthly and heavenly powers under the judgment of God (Isa 24:21).⁵

So it is true that God is judging in Revelation, but it is not necessarily the literal destruction of the heavenly host and earth that is occurring, but a judgment of God upon the earthly rulers and spiritual authorities behind them.

And think about it. In Christ’s death, he “disarmed the rulers and authorities and put them to open shame, by triumphing over them in him” (Col 2:15). Christ’s triumphal parade did not occur until his resurrection and ascension into heaven (1Pet 3:22; Eph 4:8-9), but his victory over the principalities and powers in both heaven and earth was accomplished first and spiritually at the cross. Christ’s sacrifice of the New Covenant was a spiritually real but physically metaphorical “shaking of the heavens and earth” (Heb 12:22-28).

Of course, this is only the tip of the holy mountain of biblical symbolism used by John in the book of Revelation. If you want to dive into more exploration of this ancient Hebrew worldview, I’ve written a companion book for the novel. It’s called End Times Bible Prophecy: It’s Not What They Told You.

Check out the novel Tyrant: Rise of the Beast here.

In part 2, available Saturday, April 15, Brian Godawa shares an Easter exploration of God’s earth-shattering New Covenant.

Once I believed in the Rapture. Now I don’t. In short, it’s the fault of resurrection belief.

In fact, I wonder if Christian belief in the rapture gets weaker as resurrection belief gets stronger. So far, I can’t say for sure. But I’ve noticed this tendency in others and in myself.

Many good and biblical Christians believe in the Rapture as a separate event. Here, Jesus supernaturally snatches his people away from Earth. Some say we get snatched out of our very clothes, leaving behind even pacemakers and things. (The exact doctrinal reasons are left undefined.) These Christians believe the Rapture event will occur sometime before a seven-year time of divine judgments and other terrors on Earth, which lead to the second coming of Jesus.¹

For the 1970s Rapture, you got to keep your groovy clothes.

But in this view, the final resurrection of the saints (Jesus’s saved people) won’t happen until the very end of yet another prophesied period, the one-thousand-year Millennium (Rev. 20: 1-6). During this time, Jesus reigns on the earth, but not everyone follows him.²

I have enjoyed, and still enjoy, the concept of the Rapture. I was a big Left Behind series fan and still appreciate how God used this series in my life. And I even used to draw doodles of, say, myself magically vanishing. (I’m not sure if I seriously expected this to happen soon.)

But now I’ve become one of Those Christians, who critique the Rapture idea as most people understand it. However, I hope I’m less snarky than the Christians I used to read!

I still believe in Jesus’ return and in the Resurrection. And if you use the word “Rapture” to refer to the catching-up of believers to be resurrected, of course I believe in that. But I no longer believe in the vanish- before-Tribulation Rapture. Here are three reasons why.

1. Revelation is likely meant to be symbolic.

Several Christian authors defend their view of a pre-Tribulation Rapture because they don’t believe God would let His people suffer through the Tribulation. I’m not sure this makes a lot of sense. After all, they do believe God will start a new Church, mostly of Jesus-believing Jews, who do suffer during the Tribulation. So what’s the point?

A quicker way to challenge this view is simply to ask if the Bible forecasts a real Tribulation anyway. Does the book of Revelation clearly teach we’re due for a seven-year dystopia?

By now, Dr. Tim LaHaye (1926-2016) has the correct end-times view for sure.

The late great author Tim LaHaye and others defend their view of Revelation like this:

The best guide to Bible study is “The Golden Rule of Biblical Interpretation.” To depart from this rule opens the student to all forms of confusion and sometimes even heresy.

When the plain sense of Scripture makes common sense, seek no other sense, but take every word at its primary, literal meaning unless the facts of the immediate context clearly indicate otherwise.³

This is how LaHaye and others attempt to read the book of Revelation: Let’s try to take it literally, unless you simply can’t, based on common sense and context. Simple, right?

Not necessarily. LaHaye might phrase this better elsewhere. But here he ignores what theologians call the more clearly stated grammatical-historical method of reading Scripture. Others emphasize the role of genre in determining whether you read a work as “literal” or not. In other words, if you are trying to read biblical poetry “literally,” you are actually reading it like a liberal. You’re ignoring the actual intent of the Author and authors.

In fact, LaHaye’s “literal” vs. “non-literal” dichotomy doesn’t help when you explore some passages, such as the Psalms. These often refer to God using human terms. One moment, God sends thunder and lightning. Then the next He inhales the scent of burnt offerings or covers you with His wings. In either case, you could “take every word at its primary, literal meaning unless the facts of the immediate context clearly indicate otherwise.” You could conclude that God sends thunderbolts and has nostrils and wings. That’s the “literal meaning,” right? And yet the Psalmist mixes facts with fantastical, symbolic imagery.

What then about Revelation? Some good Christians argue (I think convincingly) that this book is meant to serve a mix of fact and symbolism. Therefore, if you try first to read it “literally,” you’re actually not being very “literal.” Because it’s meant to be figurative.

As with the epistles, the primary meaning of the Revelation is what John intended it to mean, which in turn must also have been something his readers could have understood it to mean.⁴

In that case, the tribulation paradigm—and all those questions about whether God wants the Church to go through the tribulation—is itself called into question.⁵ Yet here is what startled me: you can’t find the Rapture in Revelation anyway.⁶ For Rapture teaching, you need to look to two other passages, both written by the apostle Paul. And here is where the traditional, vanish-from-clothes Rapture runs into more challenges. Christians may debate Revelation’s genre. But the epistles are a bit easier to understand.

2. 1 Corinthians 15 is about the Resurrection, not a separate Rapture.

Here the apostle Paul writes of the Resurrection as a future event. In the Resurrection, Jesus brings His people to life, reuniting their souls with new, spiritual (that is, Holy Spirit-powered) physical bodies. That way, we can live for eternity on a physical New Earth.⁷

Rapture teachers like to single out verses 51-56. These describe the “twinkling of an eye,” trumpeted moment when “we shall be changed.” However, in Rapture teaching, people first vanish from their clothes to be with Jesus. Later they are still waiting for at least the first phase of the Resurrection after the Tribulation period (Rev. 20: 4-5). Big problems here:

• “In a twinkling of an eye,” the “rapture” and Resurrection happen all at once.
• There are no gaps between these events.
• Repeat: there are no gaps between these events, not seven years, 1,000 years, or any years. It happens in a flash, in the “twinkling of an eye,” saith the Lord through Paul.
• Even more challenging, this moment marks the very end of death itself! At this rapture/resurrection, “death is swallowed up in victory” (1 Cor. 15:54). But rapture teaching still has plenty of death left to go. Millions die during the tribulation, and some people die at the end or even during the Millennium period on Earth. I think this argument alone destroys the idea of a separate rapture before the Resurrection. I’ve not yet seen any counter to this argument (though I welcome anyone’s attempt).

3. 1 Thessalonians 4 describes the single, public return of Jesus.

This Easter weekend we will celebrate Jesus’s death and resurrection. All biblical Christians expect Him to return gloriously, as described in passages such as 1 Thess. 4: 13-18.

This passage, like 1 Cor. 15, ignores all other prophecies imported from particular views of Daniel or Revelation. It simply refers to Jesus’s return. This passage also describes this event as a single event. Here we do find one “order” to the Resurrection: “the dead in Christ will rise first,” apparently getting a particular privilege (verse 16; that belief must have been a particular comfort to the grieving Thessalonian believers)! Then immediately after this first Resurrection “phase,” all other believers are “caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air” (verse 17). Again: Paul describes this as a single event.

Also, Paul speaks of this in very public terms. Jesus descends from heaven with a “cry of command” and the trumpet. The terms match Revelation 19’s imagery of his return, and 1 Corinthians 15’s herald of the Resurrection. Apparently everyone can see Jesus here. And Paul doesn’t mention interruptions of seven years, or 1,000 years, or any years whatsoever.

Again, I welcome any challenge to my view. But I don’t see how Jesus’s return is “split” into two separate events (first Rapture, then “glorious appearing” public arrival) any more than the bodily Resurrection of saints is split two or three ways with years in between.

4. Finally, Resurrection is more biblical and robust than the Rapture.

So what’s my current end-times view? I have not declared that minor. You may even call me an “agnostic” on that topic. For now, anyway, I’d prefer to major on the Bible’s main course. This is not just the idea that “God wins,” or that “pan-millennialism” is the proper end-times view. Instead, the Old Testament hints, and Jesus directly prophesies, that His people ought to major on anticipating a glorious future of reigning as resurrected saints in His world.

We have a whole holiday weekend themed around the past resurrection of Jesus Christ and the future Resurrection of His people. The incredible, fantastical wonder of this event is far more amazing, biblical, beautiful, and full-bodied than speculation about the Rapture.

Again, the Left Behind series and other works about the Rapture are loads of fun to read. But upon further reflection, they don’t really know where to go after the unmanned cars crash, and Beast starts a dystopia, and then plagues and persecution pour down. This is most striking in the final Left Behind prequel, The Rapture, which tries to follow snatched-away saints up to Heaven. The book does not benefit from its assumed belief that “Heaven,” as it is now, is where we’ll spend eternity. When scenes occur in Heaven, there are no clear rules, either biblical or imaginary, for space and time. Therefore there is nothing relatable for the Christian characters whom we follow “up there.” In fact, the most interesting stuff is going on back on Earth, where people weep and suffer and get tricked by the Antichrist.

Similarly, the Bible constantly presents “earthly” imagery for its portrayal of the final, eternal state of God’s people. This is for a very good reason: Christians should not simply expect a great “snatching away” to Heaven where we’ll live forever!⁸ In fact, the Resurrection will prepare Christians for exciting lives of wonder and worship on this renewed planet for eternity.

It’s fun to debate end-times beliefs, so long as we’re doing this in the spirit of perspective, Christlikeness, and fun. But whatever exactly happens around Jesus’s return is of secondary importance. Far more important is the Bible’s blessed hope (Titus 2:13): this same Jesus who resurrected and ascended into the clouds, will return the same way. And as He does, He will resurrect His people: real people, in real glorified bodies, with real hearts and personalities, and real appetites for food and fellowship and adventures forever.

If you listen to critics of the arts, teachers of the arts, and even a fair number of actual artists, you will hear many praises of and exhortations to realism. If you examine art, you will find that many people have been wildly successful while showing a flagrant disregard for realism.

A prime example of this is Twilight. (If you were an old, powerful, more-or-less immortal supernatural being, would you be in high school?) However, I am going to focus on Star Trek and Star Wars and their shared violation of realism in everything military. I have chosen this focus because that sort of (un)realism is widespread in fantasy and sci-fi, and also I like Star Wars and Star Trek and have enough firsthand experience of them to write about them.

I once read a detailed critique of a certain Star Trek episode that made a very strong case that, at the end of the episode, three important characters should have been court-martialed. This is how I learned that, in real militaries, staff officers (however senior) don’t take command from line officers (however junior).

But one doesn’t need that sort of knowledge to see that the entire franchise is built around a principle so lethally unrealistic only television can save these people. This is the principle that in any unknown or dangerous situation, senior officers are immediately placed at the point of greatest jeopardy. They routinely round the senior officers up into bands just small enough to be easily ambushed, just large enough to virtually exterminate the senior staff in case of disaster. The Next Generation made a show (hah) of not sending down the captain, except when he really wanted to go, but this did not improve the picture a great deal.

This is Star Trek’s main offense to military realism. There are smaller ones, such as the fact that the Enterprise keeps civilians as permanent residents. Consequently, they are always endangering small children, and you don’t want to think about what’s happening in other parts of the ship while the officers are hanging on for dear life on the violently-shaking bridge.

Of course, Star Trek would not be Star Trek if our heroes didn’t get to do the coolest part of everyone’s job. Star Wars’ offenses to realism are less fundamental, but somehow even goofier. Consider that the Rebel Alliance gives away generalships like Employee of the Month awards. They may give them away as Employee of the Month awards. There is no other way to explain why Han Solo is made a general fresh off the accomplishment of getting defrosted, nor why Lando is a general five minutes after being a shady businessman.

I know: the maneuver at Taanab. But look: No single maneuver will make you a general unless it wins the battle, ends the war, saves several major heads of state, and prevents an invasion of hostile aliens from another dimension.

Another premier example of Star Wars’ unrealistic war is the ground battle on Endor. I like Return of the Jedi better than most, but it is ludicrous that the battle was won by a horde of midget aliens armed with weapons that were obsolete at the founding of the Roman Empire. If the stormtroopers had stayed by the installation and defended it – which was the only reason they were on the moon – it would not have been possible for them to lose. Even when, strangely impelled to be idiotic, they charged into the trees, they should still have carried the day. Superior firepower beats superior numbers any day, and it isn’t possible to defeat professional soldiers with advanced weaponry by konking them with rocks.

Star Trek and Star Wars give every indication of having been written by people with a rather slippery grasp of military matters. That their lack of realism hasn’t kept them from smashing success doesn’t prove that a lack of realism is all right. But it does prove that when people turn to fiction, realism is not terribly high on their list of desired qualities.

We might have guessed.

The real world can be a scary place, especially if you’re a geek.

Unlike Frodo, we don’t have to deal with hordes of orcs, bone-freezing wraiths, slightly insane allies, tricksey traveling companions, or a sleepless eye of fire scouring the land for our whereabouts.

Our trials take the form of family members, friends, coworkers, fellow students, and people we interact with on a daily basis.

People who, for better or worse, haven’t taken up residence in Geekville. People who could care less about comic cons and cosplay or whose eyes glaze over when you start comparing Marvel and DC films.

Or who—perish the thought—have never heard of Brandon Sanderson.

via GIPHY

There’s nothing wrong with family, friends, and everyone else. I don’t have anything against non-geeks. But sometimes, when surrounded by the uninspiring real world, far from the adventure aboard a spaceship or the perils of a quest, it’s hard to cope.

“Uncle Harry, do you keep a wand in your dresser? Have you been to Hogwarts? What’s your patronus? Wait, you mean you’ve never read…? Okay, never mind.”

Much as it would be great to make Hogwarts our permanent home, we can’t live apart from the world. Well, if you’re a loner or have a particular fondness for barren mountaintops, I guess you could, but a life of solitude isn’t healthy in the long run.

Which leaves us with the difficult but unavoidable fact of living in the real world. If that’s the case, what can we do about it? How, as geeks, do we survive when we venture forth into the uncomfortable environment outside our geek (Bat?) cave?

Here are some ideas I’ve come up with.

Geek Survival Guide for the Real World

Note: sitting in a closet and crying (*cough* Katniss), while tempting, is unlikely to produce significant benefit.

1. When you’re around people who don’t share your geeky enthusiasm, just keep reminding yourself how much you’ll appreciate the next comic con.

2. If feeling particularly down, consume vast quantities of chocolate—and Turkish delight.

3. Don’t be afraid to display your colors. Wear geek apparel with pride so people know where you stand—even if you get sideways glances or raised eyebrows.

4. Have a circle of geek friends whom you can take your sorrows to and commiserate with.

5. Let the story of Sam and Frodo encourage you. Their path was dark but they survived and returned to the comfort of the Shire. What’s a day at the office or classroom by comparison?

6. Keep pictures on your phone of costumes, favorite memes, geek paraphernalia—anything to give you a boost when stuck in the Desolation of Smaug—er, I mean non-geek land.

7. Don’t hold a grudge against the Muggles. They can’t help it.

**Best used with care.**

8. Keep plenty of movie soundtrack CDs in your car that can transport you to distant places while you drive.

9. If you’re a coffee drinker, carry your favorite geek mug wherever you go, thus providing a comforting link back to Geekville.

10. When attending parties or participating in social activities, have awesome quotes ready but make sure they’re relevant to the conversation and easy to understand.

11. Keep an emergency kit handy in case you become stranded. Useful items include but aren’t limited to:

• Invisibility cloak
• Lightsaber
• Sonic screwdriver
• Susan’s horn
• Lembas wafers

12.Remember that stories often speak to real life. If you’re in a tough situation, think of how your favorite hero would respond and do the same. Unless it’s Iron Man.

via GIPHY

13. Memorize pieces of Tolkien’s poetry to recite when you need to calm your nerves.

14. Make sure your screensaver at work is a landscape of Middle-earth or some other awesome world.

15. When struggling through the tedious dullness of the day, take heart in the fact that you can watch amazing TV shows like The Flash and Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. when you get home.

16. Be your geeky self and don’t let social judgments hinder your passion, but at the same time don’t be obnoxious.

17. Watch people for subtle signals—you never know when you’ll stumble into another geek and find a new buddy.

18. Take a few minutes to browse the internet for articles, videos, and posts on Facebook that will drench you in the cleansing waters of geekiness as you trek the dusty desert of the real world.

19. On occasion, wear bow ties. If you’re feeling especially desperate, add a fez.

20. If the pressures of the real world seem ready to crush you, recall to mind Aragorn’s speech before the Black Gate and let it stir you to persevere.

The list is by no means exhaustive, but that should be enough to give you a head start. Good luck on your journeys into the real world.

May the odds be ever in your favor.

What other methods would you use to cope with the real world?

*This post appeared in original form in November 2015 at zacharytotah.com

This passion week, I think it’s important for us to revisit the subject of sacrifice. After all, there would be no Christian worldview except for the sacrifice of Christ on the cross.

Some time ago a blog post at MBT Ponderers prompted my thinking about self-sacrifice in speculative fiction. In fact the three most recent YA blockbuster series— Harry Potter, Twilight, Hunger Games—featured self-sacrificial heroes. I conclude there’s something to the idea that self-sacrifice is appealing.

C. S. Lewis was particularly good at weaving self-sacrifice into his stories. It, of course, is crucial in the (traditional) opening book of Narnia—The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe. In The Voyage of the Dawn Treader Reepicheep proves to be the person willing to sacrifice himself for others—in this case, to awaken the lost lords. Then Polly and Digory perform sacrificial acts in The Magician’s Nephew.

Interestingly, in this sixth installment of the Narnia books, the antagonist, Jadis, is guilty of annihilating the people on her world to prevent her own defeat—the precise opposite of self-sacrifice.

This quality of giving oneself over to danger or death for the sake of others is key in The Lord of the Rings, too. Gandalf is most obvious—standing against the Balrog so the rest of the Fellowship can escape the mines of Moria.

Of course there is discussion whether or not Gandalf actually died in the battle, but that same discussion took place regarding Harry Potter when he faced Voldemort. Perhaps the actual dying isn’t as important as the willingness to do so.

Which brings up Frodo. He was sacrificial in that he willingly faced unspeakable danger and insurmountable temptation, with no idea that he would survive. Yet he moved inexorably forward. Until the end. His failure and his escape, however, don’t diminish his sacrifice. They make it all the more poignant, perhaps.

The five-book series The Chronicles of Prydain by Lloyd Alexander also utilize the theme of sacrifice. In The Book of Three, for example, Gurgi who is injured, offers to stay behind so those he is traveling with can escape capture. Taran, the protagonist of the story, sacrifices a home in the valley of Medwyn in order to warn others of the impending attack by the Horned King. Ultimately, three of his traveling companions stand to fight the overwhelming force so that Taran can achieve his goal.

More recently in Mary Weber’s The Storm Siren Trilogy both of the main characters, Eogan and Nym, act self-sacrificially, either to save the other or to save the entire Hidden Lands.

Shannon Dittemore’s <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Angel-Eyes-Novel-ebook/dp/B0078FA91U/" target=”_blank”>Angel Eyes series also involves self-sacrifice by the main characters, Brielle and Jake.

Clearly self-sacrifice is a key component in both general market speculative fiction and Christian speculative fiction. But what is it about sacrifice that is so compelling? The easy answer is that it mirrors Christ’s sacrifice, and each of these stories is an echo of the Great Story. But that doesn’t explain why sacrifice resonates with us as readers. Why do readers care that a vampire boy is willing to deny himself for the girl he loves? Or that she is willing to walk into danger to be with him?

Christ Himself said, “Greater love has no one than this, that one lay down his life for his friends” (John 15:13). Do stories of sacrifice resonate with readers, then, for the simple reason that we recognize that great love? Or could it be that we actually desire that great love for ourselves? Isn’t one cry of the human heart to be loved, to be valued at that level?

My instinctual idea is to say that memorable stories include sacrifice and great stories take it one step further—showing sacrifice by the most noble for those less so, thus mirroring Christ’s death for us “while we were yet sinners.” Aslan dying for the traitor Edmund is the prime example.

What are your thoughts? Does a sacrificial character make a story more memorable? Do sacrificial acts connect you more deeply to the story?

This post is a revised and expanded version of one that first appeared here in August 2012.