Tag: faith

//so much the better

Mirriam7 Comments

aslanI was recently interviewed by my friend and fellow writer, Eli. He asked an excellent question about Christianity and mythology, and I gave a response – but the response was too short. That day I was asked to expound on the subject.

SO HERE I AM, EXPOUNDING

Many modern Christians are afraid. They’re afraid of anything that hints at opposition to their faith. While modern college campuses build ‘safe spaces’ to keep the students from verbal injury, modern Christians build ‘safe spaces’ to keep themselves and their children from anything that doesn’t agree with their beliefs. As commentators will tell you, this mentality of ‘safety’ does nothing to build up strength – rather, it weakens, as those seeking ‘safety’ will never learn to defend themselves. It wasn’t until recently, when I marathoned the Harry Potter movies for the first time, that it clicked. (Note: Magic and the Bible is a subject for another blog post, to happen soonish.)

When we act as though Christianity is weak, we portray a belief that God cannot defend himself. Charles Spurgeon said, “The Word of God is like a lion. You don’t have to defend a lion. All you have to do is let the lion loose, and the lion will defend itself.” Except we often fail to treat the truth as a lion, we treat it as a fragile house pet that will die if the temperature changes.

We are told to beware of false doctrines and false teachers. ‘Beware of.’ Be aware of. We aren’t told to scream when we see them and run the other way.

NOW, DON’T GET ME WRONG

There are things we as Christians simply shouldn’t indulge in, and this may vary person to person. We’re to appropriate – not accept. (Right and wrong do not vary, but things cause others to stumble that don’t affect others in the slightest.) This is where the conscience kicks in. For instance, I stopped watching Supernatural around season 8 because I couldn’t stomach the theology anymore. I could handle the skewing of heaven, hell, angels, and demons (most of the time) – but once they brought ‘God’ into the show, I was out. Watching God get blasphemed and treated like a fictional character no better than everyone else? Excuse me, I’m not fine with that. (This wasn’t easy, by the way. I was as attached to Sam and Dean and Cas as anyone.)

WHAT I’M SAYING IS…

Christianity has always been a faith that appropriates – or rather, redeems. I’m currently re-reading Esther DeWaal’s book, The Celtic Way of Prayer: Recovering the Religious Imagination. In the book, she describes in detail how Christianity affected the Celtic way of life, and how they accepted and absorbed their newfound faith into their old beliefs. Christianity, like a divine virus, took over paganism and appropriated it. They wrote new lyrics for old songs. They changed the words to pagan rhymes and suddenly, they went from pagan chants to God-filled blessings. Christianity does not destroy, it heals.

C. S. Lewis knew this better than anyone. As the most inspiring author I’ve ever read, and the one I continue to love the most, Lewis did not cower in the face of mythology or different theologies. Rather he accepted them for what they were – stories rife with equal falsehood and beautiful truths – and he used them to further God’s glory. He was heavily inspired by the beauty of them – and who couldn’t be? He straightened his shoulders, faced them, and said, “You’re beautiful, but much of you is false, and I’m going to change that.” And so we see mythological creatures filling his novels. We see him giving new twists to Greek myths – and as a result, we have some of the most inspiring, gorgeous, God-filled books ever written. I recently listened to a series of lectures on C. S. Lewis (presented by Hillsdale College) and in the Cosmology lecture (my favorite in the whole series), the professor said that if Lewis found truth in paganism, then, “…So much the better for paganism, not so much the worse for Christianity.”

We’re to find dark places and shine light into them. Not hide from dark places, not enter dark places; but to seek out and redeem for heaven. We’re to be salt and light, to flavor and shine – and while you can’t be salt and light until you’re salty and lit (as my mother would say), once you are salty and lit, you have no excuse. Running away or hiding in supposed safety – God doesn’t call us to this.

HE CALLS US TO WALK WITH THE LION, TO TURN IT LOOSE AND WATCH IT DEFEND ITSELF, AND THOSE WHO WALK WITH LIONS HAVE NOTHING TO FEAR.

 

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///principled fiction, that difficult creature

Mirriam17 Comments

“Have you written a blog post on how your Christian principles affect your writing?”

Well, I hadn’t, but now I have. It’s a broad subject I want to condense a bit, so I’m going to use bullet points to touch on the most important aspects.

  • First of all, I firmly believe in not shoving the Gospel down people’s throats. That’s not how the apostles did it, it’s not how Jesus did it, it’s not how we’re supposed to do it. You’ll notice that while Jesus said ‘I Am,’ he also used parables about planting seeds and oil lamps. In these parables, He never said, ‘As you can clearly see, this seed represents you. It fell right there, but you didn’t listen, no matter how many times I told you—’ He gave them the story, and left them to come up with their own conclusions.

Back when I read (or tried to read) modern Christian fiction with any frequency, I would get so frustrated at the way Christianity was waved in my face. I was already Christian and the author was preaching to the choir, but there was nothing new or inspiring about it. Saying, “I’m going shopping, Lord willing,” doesn’t add anything to the story. It doesn’t make you sound more pious, it just makes you sound overbearing. It’s annoying.

  • I know many Christians (authors and readers) who are extremely conservative in the kind of fiction they read. That is to say, many of them wouldn’t read my novels. Sexual abuse? Indiscretion? Mild language on occasion? Feral dog-men? GOODNESS GRACIOUS, and this woman calls herself a Christian writer.

Yes. Yes, I do. And in these instances, I like to point toward my biggest inspiration and guidebook – the Bible. If you’ll just open up to Judges – oh, what have we here? Well, we have a concubine being abused to death, then cut into various pieces and shipped out. Flip around some more and we have incest, near-homosexual rape, heterosexual rape, murder, S*ng of S*lomon, and yes – even mild language.

The Bible, my friends, is a very adult book. So what makes it ‘okay’ to read? The whole point of it. The point of the novel is God. The Bible is rife with bad examples, but it is not about these bad examples. It’s about God.

  • I do not write anything I wouldn’t read. Sometimes, this means sitting back and looking at something from a different angle, or sending it to a friend so they can give me a second opinion. Sometimes I cut a scene or ditch a good idea, because that niggling voice in the back of my mind whispers, when in doubt, don’t. Frequently, it just means not dwelling on a certain aspect. For instance, Amnon raped his half-sister, Tamar. (It happened. Look it up.) But the Bible does not give us a graphic sex scene – it focuses on the consequences of what happened.

My principles affect what I’m willing to show the audience. Uncle Ben gave us some pretty good writing advice when he said, ‘With great power comes great responsibility.’ It can be extremely tricky, and I won’t always get it right – sometimes I might show too much, sometimes I might not show enough. (This is where good friends who will read your writing and hold you accountable come in hand. Looking at you, Arielle and Lauren.)

  • I don’t let the dark aspects of the novel overshadow the lighter ones. I try to keep a balance. Whenever I come away from a novel or a movie or a show or even a song, I have a very distinct flavor in my mouth. Sometimes that flavor is sweet, sometimes it’s salty, but when I write something I don’t want people to come away bitter. I don’t want them to feel as if they need to wash their mouth out with soap, or eat something else to mask the taste. That would destroy the whole point. Again, looking at the Bible, there’s a lot of darkness there, but in the end – it’s about God, and it’s about light.

It can be very, very complicated to write a novel, as a Christian, and have the novel be a good, deep, solid, lasting thing people will remember. You don’t want people to remember the book as ‘oh, yeah, a Christian book.’ You want them to remember it as a good book. Tolkien abhorred allegories, and yet he gave us the Lord of the Rings. Jesus is not found in the Lord of the Rings. And yet that book has encouraged and strengthened more than any amount of Christian fiction that tries to spoon-feed me their idea of Christ.

I imagine it would be much easier to write without Christian principles, but it’s a challenge I’m more than willing to tackle for the sake of my faith.

Here are the novels (written by Christians, although not necessarily ‘Christian fiction’) that have inspired me the most:

Anything by Stephen Lawhead

Most novels by Ted Dekker (exempting ‘Adam’ and ‘The Boneman’s Daughters,’ which I haven’t read).

Anything by J. R. R. Tolkien

A Wrinkle in Time by Madeline L’Engle

This Present Darkness by Frank Peretti

The Man Who Was Thursday by G. K. Chesterton

The Narnia series (okay, anything by) C. S. Lewis

The Dragons in Our Midst series by Bryan Davis (YA series that greatly influenced me as a teen)

I hope this post was helpful. If there was anything I didn’t cover or mention, please let me know!