Why do we have storytellers? Because we are created in God's image. The Bible is His Story and the most important of any story. The content of God's story encompasses all truth. He used individual writers and their personalities to collect His Story for believers.
Today God's Word is complete. We add nothing to it. Those storytellers who live for Christ, reflect threads of His Story in their written and oral tales. God's plot began in Genesis and His Story continues to this day. We are part of His Story. He works in and through us as writers.
God continues to use the individual personalities of those who know Him as storytellers. Many cultures do the same, but not every individual's stories reflect the truth of His Story because not every writer or storyteller knows the truth. Christian speculative fiction offers one more viable vehicle to tell a story threaded with truths from His Story. We are reminded in 1 Timothy 6:17-29
Instruct those who are rich in this present world not to be conceited or to fix their hope on the uncertainty of riches, but on God, who richly supplies us with all things to enjoy. Instruct them to do good, to be rich in good works, to be generous and ready to share storing up for themselves the treasure of a good foundation for the future, so that they may take hold of that which is life indeed.
As storytellers who enjoy fantasy, Science Fiction and speculative fiction, Christian authors who write in these genres use their talent to share His Story. It's not only a means of expression, but also a good work. A way to share the importance of taking hold of that which is life indeed.
5 comments:
Thanks Virginia, this blog is a great avenue to share how God works even in the writer's life.
Donna
We are created in His image.
So much value comes from that thought. If a communicating race has ben created by a communicating God, is the Bible's existance not evidence of Him?
This is not one of the five Theological arguments--too circular in it's reasoning.
But it stresses Donna's point. Every human, believer or non, has been cast in the mold of a creative communicator.
Donna, incidentaly, cannot seem to divorce herself from this concept. Caleb Sees the Light, her contribution to the Light at the Edge of Darkness, a Biblical speculative fiction anthology, includes a sci-fi alien communicating Theological truth. Donna's novel, Windwalker focuses on Divine prophecy in a fantasy realm. Three epic generations are drawn to her messiah because humans are communicative beings.
If He can even use even unbelievers to His glory, the imagination of a believer is putty in the hands of the Potter.
How true, Frank.
Nebuchadnezzar is a biblical example of an unbeliever that God used as a vehicle to communicate. This unbelieving king's dreams caused him to search out an interpreter. To really test the interpreter he did not tell the dream but expected the interpreter to know the dream and its meaning. Wise men unable to fulfill the king's expectations feared for their lives. God chose a young Jewish captive, Daniel, to be this interpreter and today Daneil's life still impacts believers. It's amazing how communication doesn't just impact today, but moves through generations to touch lives hundreds and thousands of years later.
One thought I had when writing Caleb Sees the Light is that people that believe what their told instead of measuring it against God's truth open themselves to deception. If the rapture happened tomorrow and God carried all believers from earth to be with him, how many people left behind would believe we were taken by aliens? I think it would be an easy sell.
Donna
As a Christian writer I view my "job" (my joy) as that of telling the parable of life. While I currently write contemporary mystery/suspense revolving around police investigations, this too is a parable of life. I have written stories for Hanukkah, legends and prison stories, to name but a few categories, all of which fit nicely into spec-fic.
Imagine, if you will, an elderly Chinese man climbing to a sacred spot overlooking the hills that make up Kowloon. Imagine he is entrusted to keep the family tradition of teaching his grandson the meaning of the 8 hills of Kowloon. Imagine further, that this grandfather has become a Christian. The legends say that when the emporer came to this spot and saw these 8 mountains he remarked, "There are 8 dragons here," because the belief was that every mountain contained a dragon. The emporer's councelor softly reminded him, "There are now 9, your majesty," since it was also believed that the emporer was a god and in him was a dragon. What is the old man to say to his grandson. Enter, "The Legend of the Golden Dragon," a teaching of the Gospel of Jesus couched in the traditions of ancient China.
As writers we should not be so critical about statements like, "It just can't be that way." Because some people just can't see beyond the physical to that which we, the writer can see. For those who are willing to attempt to go beyon something tangible to something of far greater worth we are able to transport them into worlds and societies and legends that all speak of one Truth, Jesus. Those who travel with us there come away from reading a story of ours much the same way Moses came down from Mount Sinai. They are filled with a new light they previously did not know esist. God bless you all.
David,
You say it well. The thing we must remember is that God created those willing to go beyond into the land of Spec Fic and those stuck on this side of what if....
Donna
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