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@deeprun

I’ll definitely check Dekker out. And yes, read Peretti! He’s absolutely amazing at developing tension and inserting Christian elements into genres that don’t seem very “Christian”. I read and loved his “Cooper Kids Adventure Series” as a young teen, and I’ll still re-read some of the strong ones like The Door In the Dragon’s Throat, because they’re good as novels, not just as kids books. The ending of that book still gives me chills to this day. I also really enjoyed The Oath. If you’re not into more horror/suspense stuff however, you might not like him… his sense of theme and overall hope in God is really well written in my opinion however. 🙂

I think a lot of our view on diversity comes from our culture and the way history is taught, as well. We have a joke around here, about the prevalence “black history” has taken in education in the past decade or so – branching off the bumper stickers that say “Black Lives Matter”, we have a line up here in cow country with “Black Cows Matter”. And someone thought it would be funny to then split off and make one that says “Red Cows Matter”. XD Apparently, they thought the red and white cows were being left out of all the popularity.

But beyond funny little idiosyncrasies – it’s really odd when you think about it, how much of our perception is shaped by how and what we’re taught. For example – 90% of Americans probably think the Civil War was fought solely to free the slaves. But in reality, while that was a part of it, the war was more over the secession of the southern states than it was slavery. The freedom of slaves was more a symptom than anything, though Lincoln did have strong feelings on the matter I believe. But many Americans(and non-Americans) grew up thinking we had this long, bloody war for a “noble” cause like equality of races… when it really was more about land and money than it was race.

Or even WWII, one of the most “known” and popularized wars due to the Holocaust and Hitler, still has huge misconceptions on the part of how the war started, exactly how Hitler gained popularity, and what the Germans thought about this war. My grandmother lived through that war as a child in Germany – it wasn’t pretty on both ends. And yet many people still think most of it was the Holocaust, or that the Germans originally started with the message of death to Jews and the “master race”. Or even that the German people wanted the war.

I think a lot of it has to do with the glorification and popularization of certain historical events like WWII or the Civil War, that make people think there were a lot more noble than they were. Technically, such perceptions could be applied to anything, but it seems to be especially applied to war. People then gain the perception that there are “good” and “bad” sides in war – which to me, seems faulty. It’s war. There are more or less moral quandaries with each side either faces and breaches or break and crush, but it is more about money and power than any “moral message” the audience would like it to be about. But history isn’t as pretty as the books and movies make it out to be, and more often than not the only moral message is that of the depravity of humanity.

@taylorclogston

I’m not even sure if I know what classifies as “slasher” XD, but I do enjoy thrillers and intense movies with lots of psychological suspense, so….