Burk Parsons
As Christians, we are called to study the Scriptures diligently and to know God as God so that in whatever we do, whether we read stories, write stories, or create stories, we will do so to the glory of the God of Scripture — not the God of our own imaginations.
Gospel Centered Fantasy
Thomas Fletcher Booher
Many Christian fantasy books will talk about being faithful to some kind of higher power, but rarely do we see the need to pray and trust and draw strength from the higher power in order to remain faithful to it. And when we remove this aspect from our writing, we remove the gospel, and thusly Christianity from our writing.
Literary Genre of Fantasy and Its Use in Imparting Christian Truth
Thomas Clayton Booher
If you want to portray the evilness of evil, fantasy allows you to do that in its most horrific form (dragons, evil wizards and witches, ruthless and heartless orcs, evil emperors, and so on). Look into the bulbous eyes of Gollum, and you see the evil of greed personified. Contrariwise, fantasy allows you to portray good in its most sublime form. How can any child miss the love and sacrifice of Aslan who gives himself up to merciless mockery and brutal death for the despicable Edmund?
Good and Evil in The Lord Of The Rings
Keith Mathison
Although evil cannot be completely eradicated in the present age, we can and must combat it whenever and wherever we are. As Gandalf tells Frodo: “All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given us.” In Tolkien’s story, the primary means of overcoming evil is through love. This love manifests itself in many ways, but in The Lord of the Rings, the most important ways in which it manifests itself are through the trust and self-sacrifice involved in friendship and through acts of kindness, mercy, and pity.
The Chronicles of Narnia
Although evil cannot be completely eradicated in the present age, we can and must combat it whenever and wherever we are. As Gandalf tells Frodo: “All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given us.” In Tolkien’s story, the primary means of overcoming evil is through love. This love manifests itself in many ways, but in The Lord of the Rings, the most important ways in which it manifests itself are through the trust and self-sacrifice involved in friendship and through acts of kindness, mercy, and pity.
The Chronicles of Narnia
Leland Ryken
The key to the religious meanings of the Narnian stories is the figure of Aslan. When at age forty Lewis decided to try to make a story out of his mental pictures of “a faun carrying an umbrella, a queen on a sledge, a magnificent lion,” at first he “had very little idea how the story would go. But then suddenly Aslan came bounding into it. …Once He was there he pulled the whole story together, and soon He pulled the six other Narnian stories in after him.
Reflecting God's Creation-Work in Our Writing
The key to the religious meanings of the Narnian stories is the figure of Aslan. When at age forty Lewis decided to try to make a story out of his mental pictures of “a faun carrying an umbrella, a queen on a sledge, a magnificent lion,” at first he “had very little idea how the story would go. But then suddenly Aslan came bounding into it. …Once He was there he pulled the whole story together, and soon He pulled the six other Narnian stories in after him.
Reflecting God's Creation-Work in Our Writing
Thomas Clayton Booher
God created all-powerfully producing a magnificent creation marked by precision, order, and design. For God, this was effortless, the mere speaking of it into existence. We want to create an imaginary world that similarly exhibits precision, order, and design, but unlike God’s effortless speech, the creation of such a world takes exacting labor on our part. The writer must throw every ounce of care he has into constructing phrases, sentences, paragraphs that knit seamlessly a believable world. This does not mean flowery or witty. It means realism. The world must be imaginatively real, as vivid as the one the reader walks into when he opens the front door and steps out. It takes careful development of character and voice, of events and their interrelation to other events and characters. It cannot be shoddy, superficial, wooden, hackneyed, or stereotypical.
The Key to C.S. Lewis
God created all-powerfully producing a magnificent creation marked by precision, order, and design. For God, this was effortless, the mere speaking of it into existence. We want to create an imaginary world that similarly exhibits precision, order, and design, but unlike God’s effortless speech, the creation of such a world takes exacting labor on our part. The writer must throw every ounce of care he has into constructing phrases, sentences, paragraphs that knit seamlessly a believable world. This does not mean flowery or witty. It means realism. The world must be imaginatively real, as vivid as the one the reader walks into when he opens the front door and steps out. It takes careful development of character and voice, of events and their interrelation to other events and characters. It cannot be shoddy, superficial, wooden, hackneyed, or stereotypical.
The Key to C.S. Lewis
Gene Edward Veith
The point here is that Lewis was a complex thinker with a wide-ranging sensibility. He was both logical and wildly imaginative, conservative and a non-conformist, a devout Christian whose faith was never stodgy or limiting, but stimulating and liberating. And I think I have found the key to understanding Lewis in all of his complexities and in all of his different kinds of writing.
Does the Bible Have Anything To Say About Writing Fiction?
Got Questions Website
The Bible is the Book of Truth. Several times it exhorts us to speak truth and reject lies. Where does fiction fit in? Is telling a made-up story a lie? Is it sinful to create and distribute something that is untrue? After all, 1 Timothy 1:4 tells us to avoid myths and fables.
...
In fact, the Bible is filled with fiction.
The point here is that Lewis was a complex thinker with a wide-ranging sensibility. He was both logical and wildly imaginative, conservative and a non-conformist, a devout Christian whose faith was never stodgy or limiting, but stimulating and liberating. And I think I have found the key to understanding Lewis in all of his complexities and in all of his different kinds of writing.
Does the Bible Have Anything To Say About Writing Fiction?
Got Questions Website
The Bible is the Book of Truth. Several times it exhorts us to speak truth and reject lies. Where does fiction fit in? Is telling a made-up story a lie? Is it sinful to create and distribute something that is untrue? After all, 1 Timothy 1:4 tells us to avoid myths and fables.
...
In fact, the Bible is filled with fiction.
