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calidris replied to the topic Fanatical or Fantasy? Fictional of Heretical? in the forum Fantasy Writers 3 years, 8 months ago
@jared-williams I have a few thoughts regarding this!
So for me personally, I wouldn’t feel comfortable writing it, but I don’t think I’d have an issue with reading it, since I know you’re a Christian and you’re dedicated to following Christ (you don’t come across as lukewarm at all XD).
In my opinion, the more prominently God and the Bible feature in a Christian’s work, the more responsibility they have to portray it accurately. For example, in the Chronicles of Narnia, Aslan is a great symbol of Christ, and a good allegorical representation of Him, but at the end of the day he is a lion, and Jesus isn’t. I think this degree of separation allows for more creativity in the series, if you will, because it’s already established that it’s not supposed to be a 100% accurate portrayal.
However, if a person were to directly include God as a character…I really think that can be dangerous ground tbh. It’s something I’m still questioning and wrestling with, because inaccurate portrayals of God Himself are extremely careless and irresponsible imo, and might cause a brother or sister to stumble.
One thing I would caution against is portraying Satan as having too much power – imo a lot of Christians are getting trapped in a cycle of fear because they give the works of darkness too much credit and forget how powerful God really is (I also blame the news – it’s good to be aware, but it’s very easy to buy into fearmongering and start seeing the horrific events portrayed as representative of all the world around us.) It’s one reason why I’m skeptical of Christian horror – our focus is supposed to be on Christ, not darkness. By all means, we should portray darkness, but our stories should never be without hope, because that’s such a huge, essential part of the Gospel!
I guess the main issue I see is that by writing a sort of mythology where Satan challenges God and God responds in that way – it “gives” Satan the power to redirect God’s original plan, and I think the implications for this world would be pretty grim. If God says that He’s going to restore all things and make everything right, and then makes a new cycle of sin and despair…what hope have we? What hope do we have if our God isn’t true to His word? Obviously I know you intention isn’t to be heretical, and I really do appreciate your openness to advice, but those are some pretty weighty implications (especially when it has such a strong connection to our world.)
Could you create an allegorical world? Imo a lot of the things you’re including could work perfectly fine in a completely made up world – your could have an apocalypse, this epic battle between light and darkness, and then the Satan figure challenges the God figure…There’s also some interesting concepts here of a post apocalyptic fantasy world, which I think is really cool XD
I would pray over it, and ask God how He wants you to represent Christ in your writing. It’s something I’ve should do too – tbh it’s a question I struggle with. I’ve prayed over touchy subjects on my own writing, and God has already given me peace over some of them. And I know He’s going to answer the rest, even if it takes a while.
Anyways, this is just my take on it! Hope this helps 🙂










