Category: About Writing

Recently I was talking with a friend who mentioned to me that she’s seen only one of the Star Wars films. She saw the first one when it first came out back in 1977 and never watched another.

Why?

Because she had recently converted to Christianity from another religion and, as a zealous new Fundamentalist (she’s now a Catholic), she was horrified by the alien creatures in the film.

"I wanted to get up in front of the screen and shout ‘God didn’t make these!‘" she told me.

While she now recognizes that the mere depiction of alien beings isn’t inherently sinful, she still doesn’t particularly enjoy sci-fi, and part of the reason why is that God didn’t make creatures like what you see in the movies–at least so far as we’re aware at this point.

I’ve had other friends express similar reservations about sci-fi. They just can’t relate to the alien creatures or situations that one often finds in it, and sometimes they also point to the fact that God didn’t make the world the way that it’s depicted in sci-fi.

I’m sympathetic to this. I’m a sci-fi fan, but I’m still sympathetic.

From one perspective, I’m sympathetic to it on an emotional level. Humans have emotional comfort zones regarding what they want to experience. If our experiences are too strange, too alien, too outside-our-comfort-zones then we get . . . uncomfortable. For most people, just looking at the Star-Nosed Mole (something God did create!) is enough to give them the willies.

If science fiction gives some folks an outside-the-comfort-zone experience and makes them uncomfortable, I respect that. That’s not where my comfort zones are set, but I have such zones just like everyone else, and some forms of fiction I find distasteful and, therefore, I avoid them.

That’s a matter of taste, though, not of principle.

I’m also sympathetic to my friends’ theological concern, for I had the same concern back when I was an Evangelical. Much as I liked science-fiction, I wondered about a form of entertainment that depicts the world in a way that God didn’t make it.

After all, one could argue, if God chose to make the world this way and not that way, why should we spend time filling our imaginations with the way the world ain’t?

I realized, though, that this objection got at a principle that affected a lot more literature than just science fiction. It also affected fantasy, of course, and imaginative fiction generally. But it still affected yet more.

It affected fiction itself.

There are distinctions to be made between different kinds of fiction (fantasy, sci-fi, realistic, detective, romance, western, etc.). They all obey different rules and depart in different ways from the way the world actually is. But all forms of fiction depart in some way from the way that God made the world.

That’s why we call it fiction. . . . It’s the way the world ain’t . .  stories that aren’t true.

Sci-fi and fantasy may (sometimes) break laws of nature that apply to the real world. Detective stories, romances, and westerns may all be written according to formulas that involve wildly improbably events that seldom happen–at least in conjunction with each other–in the real world. But even the most realistic story (or what in a typical English department would be considered a realistic story) involves envisioning the world a way that it isn’t.

So the objection can be posed even to realistic narratives: Why should we fill up our imaginations with material about the world the way God didn’t make it?

It’s a question worth considering.

There are good answers to it, and in upcoming posts I’ll share with you what I take to be some of those answers, but for now why not contemplate the problem?

Recently I was talking with a friend who mentioned to me that she’s seen only one of the Star Wars films. She saw the first one when it first came out back in 1977 and never watched another.

Why?

Because she had recently converted to Christianity from another religion and, as a zealous new Fundamentalist (she’s now a Catholic), she was horrified by the alien creatures in the film.

"I wanted to get up in front of the screen and shout ‘God didn’t make these!‘" she told me.

While she now recognizes that the mere depiction of alien beings isn’t inherently sinful, she still doesn’t particularly enjoy sci-fi, and part of the reason why is that God didn’t make creatures like what you see in the movies–at least so far as we’re aware at this point.

I’ve had other friends express similar reservations about sci-fi. They just can’t relate to the alien creatures or situations that one often finds in it, and sometimes they also point to the fact that God didn’t make the world the way that it’s depicted in sci-fi.

I’m sympathetic to this. I’m a sci-fi fan, but I’m still sympathetic.

From one perspective, I’m sympathetic to it on an emotional level. Humans have emotional comfort zones regarding what they want to experience. If our experiences are too strange, too alien, too outside-our-comfort-zones then we get . . . uncomfortable. For most people, just looking at the Star-Nosed Mole (something God did create!) is enough to give them the willies.

If science fiction gives some folks an outside-the-comfort-zone experience and makes them uncomfortable, I respect that. That’s not where my comfort zones are set, but I have such zones just like everyone else, and some forms of fiction I find distasteful and, therefore, I avoid them.

That’s a matter of taste, though, not of principle.

I’m also sympathetic to my friends’ theological concern, for I had the same concern back when I was an Evangelical. Much as I liked science-fiction, I wondered about a form of entertainment that depicts the world in a way that God didn’t make it.

After all, one could argue, if God chose to make the world this way and not that way, why should we spend time filling our imaginations with the way the world ain’t?

I realized, though, that this objection got at a principle that affected a lot more literature than just science fiction. It also affected fantasy, of course, and imaginative fiction generally. But it still affected yet more.

It affected fiction itself.

There are distinctions to be made between different kinds of fiction (fantasy, sci-fi, realistic, detective, romance, western, etc.). They all obey different rules and depart in different ways from the way the world actually is. But all forms of fiction depart in some way from the way that God made the world.

That’s why we call it fiction. . . . It’s the way the world ain’t . .  stories that aren’t true.

Sci-fi and fantasy may (sometimes) break laws of nature that apply to the real world. Detective stories, romances, and westerns may all be written according to formulas that involve wildly improbably events that seldom happen–at least in conjunction with each other–in the real world. But even the most realistic story (or what in a typical English department would be considered a realistic story) involves envisioning the world a way that it isn’t.

So the objection can be posed even to realistic narratives: Why should we fill up our imaginations with material about the world the way God didn’t make it?

It’s a question worth considering.

There are good answers to it, and in upcoming posts I’ll share with you what I take to be some of those answers, but for now why not contemplate the problem?

I’ve decided to add a category to the left hand column devoted to the subject of writing. I already have categories on fiction, books, etc., but these are mostly taken up with particular works or series.

The new one will be devoted to blog posts about the craft of writing itself–both how to do it and what moral and theological questions it raises.

A couple of things started me thinking along these lines. The first was a request I had to help someone learn how to do apologetic-style writing. I’ve been doing this for a baker’s dozen of years now, and in that time I’ve grown a lot as a writer. (Of course, like everyone, I also have more growing to do.) There are certain tricks of the trade–both of writing in general and apologetic writing in particular–that I’ve learned, and I wanted to start writing them down in a place where they could benefit others.

The second thing was the recent dustup over what Pre-16 may have written in a thank you note regarding Harry Potter. This surfaced a number of moral/theological issues connected with that, while I didn’t have time to go into them at the moment, I still thought were worth exploring.

I’ve got less experience writing fiction than non-fiction. Frankly, I don’t have that much time for it. But I do have some experience, and many of the rules are ones it shares with non-fiction writing.

I also have the same experience as others of reading (or viewing or listening to) fiction and wrestling with the moral and theological isues it raises.

So. . . . Hope this’ll be of interest to folks!

To be continued. . . .