Author and Story

Christopher Miller, a Speculative Faith contributor, wrote an intriguing blog entitled, We Are Not Storyless!  He began with the unthinkable (for a writer at least) of what it would be like if there were no such thing as story. He did not phrase the question completely in terms of stories, that is he did not just ask, What if there were no stories, but, What if there were no such thing as Story. The difference is quite palpable if one dwells on it. Stories are the concrete, sweat and tears labor of an author that could not at all be a possibility if there were no such thing as the ideal or concept of Story. When an author cobbles together characters and narrative in a plot that unfolds with a beginning, middle, and an end, which has a progression that is logical, coherent, and meaningful, he can only do so because there is Story.

The difference might be illustrated with miracles. Redemptive history as it is recorded in the Bible was relatively devoid of miracles; they came few and far between. Only during specific redemptive events, such as the Exodus, did miracles teem. They appear sporadically elsewhere in Old Testament history. But when Jesus appears, the New Testament record bubbles over with miracles. John deliberated over the seven he included in his gospel because he writes: And truly Jesus did many other signs in the presence of His disciples, which are not written in this book; but these are written that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that believing you may have life in His name. John 20:30, 31. John chose the seven miracles he records for a specific reason - to persuade the reader to believe in the Son of God. We may say that Jesus performed a miracle to authenticate his claim as the God-man and to validate his message - the gospel. Or, we may say that Jesus proved himself and his message to be true by way of miracle. In the first instance, we have a specific event in mind; in the second, we have an idea of what characterizes the event. We may simply point to the act of Jesus turning water into wine on the one hand, or we may think more deeply, on the other, and ponder the supernatural character of that act and see that it typifies what is true about all such acts, that they are indicative of a person in which everything about him is supernatural.

In the same way are stories related to Story. We talk about Story in the abstract because that is where it belongs. But without the abstract, the concrete would be impossible. Without the idea of Story, there could be no such things as stories. There must be the metaphysical for there to be the physical. There must be the idea before there is a materialization of that idea in the physical world in which we live. Plato labored over the problem of form and matter, and in a way, that is what we are doing here.

Consider the question, Where did Story come from? How is it that there is Story in the first place that makes stories a possibility? The answer lies in the Triune God. Before creation ever was, there was God in three Persons. He was Story and he was the story. He was Story because everything necessary for a story resided in him - Characters, interrelation, communion. God was his own story because he was Story.

In the internal counsel of the Triune God, there was the purpose to create. With the creation, God brought story into being in a different realm. A part of that story is the creation of one who bears the image of God, and as image bearer, he has the capacity to reflect God as story-maker. It may be that story-making reflects God more fully than any other creative attribute man has. In story-making, the author is creating an imaginative world in which he purposes his characters to behave in a certain manner and for particular ends - ends that please him as the author. Christopher Miller struck at the heart of this as he, in effect, compares our authorship with the authorship of God:

As an author, I don’t ask my characters for permission to let them suffer or face evil. I know the troubles they face will ultimately be for their good. I don’t revel in the difficulty, but without trials their overcoming would not nearly be as good. We do not know what is good for us. Our perspective is two dimensional, the Author alone has the full picture.

Night of the Living Dead Christian, by Matt Mikalatos. March 2012 CSFF Blog Tour, Day 3

The author identifies a disturbing problem so prevalent in our churches today, and that is the disjunction between so-called faith and the evidence of that faith through works. He brings this out near the end of the novel, after the werewolf’s quest for a cure has come to a successful conclusion:

...it suddenly hit me that our churches are full of these people. Faith with no deeds. We believe in Jesus, we go to church, we lead semi-decent lives, but we aren’t being transformed. We aren’t changing. We don’t think the deeds matter, because we have the “fire insurance.” We’re going to get into Heaven just fine, so we can keep lying and stealing and sleeping around and murdering and being selfish and whatever else it is we’re doing.

  But what James seemed to be saying was that a faith like that was a problem. It’s not the deeds or lack of deeds that’s a problem, it’s that something is wrong with our faith if it’s not producing actions. It’s ineffectual. It’s the sort of faith that fills a pew but leads us to a moment when we are face-to-face with Jesus and show him our works and he says, “I never knew you. Away from me, you evildoers!” (p 217)

Can we identify the reasons for why this problem exists? Obviously, it has been present with us since the beginning of the New Testament church as evidenced by the letter of James, “So also faith, by itself, if it does not have works, is dead,” 2:17). Part of the reason is the natural tendency of our depravity to misunderstand the implications of the gospel. Paul sensed this as well, and, like James, may have had to defend against it: “What shall we say then? Shall we continue in sin that grace may abound? Certainly not! How shall we who died to sin live any longer in it?” Rom 6:1,2.

Mr. Mikalatos understands this aspect of the gospel, that genuine saving faith produces good works, and he brings the reader face-to-face with it. There is a great need for that in our Christian writing, and Mr. Mikalatos has not shrunk from that.

Yet, there is a serious flaw in Mr. Mikalatos’s theology, and it can actually contribute to the problem. The flaw is this: he does not believe in man’s total depravity, and one's stance on total depravity  has a direct bearing on his preaching and evangelism which in turn affects the response of the unconverted. Let me explain.

In a conversation with Robert (a zombie) and Lara (a vampire), who are despairing of their conditions, Mikalatos points to the image of God in them as a reason for hope. Robert counters by asserting we are totally depraved and if we are a reflection of God, bearing his image, then God himself would likewise have to be completely depraved. Mr. Mikalatos responds:

“I don’t think so. It might mean that we’ve misunderstood what it means to be sinful. Or that we’ve emphasized it so much that we’ve simply lost sight of the fact that in our deepest, most horrific actions, some piece of us is still outside of that, some part of us is made in God’s image, and that’s not something we can ever completely eradicate.” (p 220)

A little later, Matt relates a story for Robert and Lara about a symphony he and his wife once attended, and how the music filled the concert hall with magnificent beauty, and how it revealed that, as an image-bearer,

“...a man can take what is in his mind and scratch it out on paper, and others can fashion instruments, and still other sacrifice their lives to learn to bring pleasing sounds from these instruments.” (p 222)

And then, later again, while observing other nameless men and women who had attended the symphony, and reflecting on the players of the symphony, and the conductor, that for all of them and us,

“... we need not be captives to our base selves, because by God’s grace there stirs a deeper desire to be like the one who made us.” (p 223)

Now, I believe that we are made in God’s image and appeal unhesitatingly to that fact as a reason to pursue writing as a conscious effort to reflect our Creator through the creation of our own story-making.

But being made in God’s image does not mean that there lies within the sinner a spark or tiny island or a small reservoir by which he wants to be like the one who made him. If this notion of an inherent sensitivity or openness or searching for God is at the bottom of one’s anthropology, I maintain that one’s understanding and explanation of the gospel is going to be affected adversely. If there is somewhere deep in the heart of every person a desire to be like God, then the appeal to that person will be merely to become a follower of Jesus. And that is not what the gospel calls us to do. We cannot call sinners to become followers of Jesus because sinners do not want to be followers. Sinners want to be sinners.

The New Testament appeal to the sinner is this, “Repent and believe.” Jesus saves us from our sins. He frees us from our sins. If there is any hope for change, it does not spawn from a fractured remnant of the image of God that resides in us as a deep, innate stirring that seeks to be like the one who made us. We are called to look away from ourselves and turn wholly to the one who has the power to set us free. By the work of regeneration, the Spirit of God awakens us to our sinfulness, grants us repentance and faith to turn to the only one who can free us from our sin - its penalty, power, and someday, its presence. And that will not happen unless the sinner is faced with the truth of his sinfulness and his complete helplessness to do anything about it.

Regrettably, the gospel call often is misconstrued to be a call to follow Jesus. Mr. Mikalatos himself presents the gospel in this way as one may conclude from videos of his speaking engagements. Such a call assumes that the one called actually has the power to follow Jesus. A call to follow Jesus presumes that if the sinner looks within himself he will realize that following Jesus is the only thing that makes sense.

The response to such a call is disastrous. Instead of the sinner repenting and turning to Christ to be delivered from his sin and thereby enabled to do what he cannot do in himself, he takes courage in his own ability to follow Christ, having a false sense that he has the power to do it, and that all he needs is to give in and let Christ show him how. It does not address the root of his problem, his slavery to sin and inability to do anything but sin. There may be change, but it is not the transformation that the New Testament speaks of. The sinner remains at heart an unchanged sinner.

Thanks to Saltriver (Tyndale House Publishers) for kindly providing a copy of Night of the Living Dead Christian for review on the March 2012 Christian Science Fiction and Fantasy Blog Tour.

Matt Mikalatos’s Web Page
List of CSFF Blog Tour Participants

Night of the Living Dead Christian on Amazon.