Can There Be Such a Thing as “Christian Science Fiction”?

The old trope says there’s no such thing as a dumb question, but obviously that’s not true.  Questions like the above and “Will government intervention actually lower the cost of college (or anything)?” are patently stupid questions.

Yet, we ask them often, mainly in the hopes of starting an argument.  I mean, that has to be the answer, right?  Because to pretend the answer to our dumb question is not self-evident is to be even dumber than our question.

Actual photo of a real--not fictional--mushroom growing in central Oklahoma

For starters, let’s look at the last word in our headline question: “fiction”.  What is fiction?  According to Merriam-Webster, fiction is defined as “written stories about people and events that are not real, literature that tells stories which are imagined by the writer, or something that is not true.”  Examples of fiction might include “Gone with the Wind”, “Catcher in the Rye” or the Affordable Care Act.

Fiction, then, can be set in any world, in any world-view.  Want to write a story set in the mythical world of Candy Land?  Go ahead.  Want to envision a world where the sky is plaid with floating cans of aerosol cheese the only sentient life?  You can do that, too.

The thing is, there really are no rules for fiction, per se.  There are rules for writing … sort of.  If you want to write something and have it graded for school, it needs to conform to the grammar and spelling rules your school subscribes to.  If you want to write something for publication in a magazine, check with that magazine to find out what rules they enforce.  Even if you were to try and write sports articles for the website SB Nation—where there are no rules concerning grammar, spelling or coherence—there are vague guidelines (I assume without evidence) stating the article needs to be about sports.

Now, in front of the word “fiction” we (mankind) often attach like a spavined horse unwillingly dragging a rattletrap wagon loaded with carcasses to the butcher (where the horse, too, will be executed) certain qualifying words.  “Western” fiction, “romantic” fiction, “pulp” fiction and, yes, “science fiction.”

These words rarely mean what any rational person would think they mean.  While “western fiction” conjures up in the mind images of cowboys, Indians and log forts in lands where there are no trees, it is often interchangeable with “frontier fiction” and can be set in the forests of Maine or on the beaches of Barbados.

The term “science fiction” might lead one to think that writings falling under that general heading are based in science.  Oh how innocent you are, little blacksmith!  Among the aficionados of science fiction, one of the favorite pastimes is the casting of aspersions on anyone who deviates from orthodoxy in the slightest way.

What is the orthodoxy from which people stray?  Each aficionado has their own definition.

See, for most of us, “science fiction” describes a wide variety of “fiction”.  (Remembering, of course, that the word “fiction” means “they made it up.”)  Most of us luddites consider science fiction to contain Stars Trek, War and Gate, as well as Captain Midnight, the works of Poul Anderson, and that episode of “The Dick Van Dyke Show” where they dream about the walnuts.

Not the aficionado.  The thing the science fiction aficionado loves best about science fiction is arguing what’s in and what’s out.  One aficionado considers “Star Wars” to be science fiction because they hold a very broad definition which includes “anything in space” while another considers “Star Wars” to be space opera and most definitely not science fiction because there’s no scientific basis for X-wing fighters to make a sound in the vacuum of space.  Still another likes to argue that “The X-Files” was science fiction because they pretended to use science even though they never went to space.

However, I have tried to argue that the greatest science fiction show ever on television was “Quincy, M.E.” because it was “fiction” that used and highlighted “science” and have found that this idea generally makes the aficionados collective heads explode.  (In fact, the only person I have ever unfriended on Facebook was this knucklehead who’s only apparent joy in life was belittling everyone who didn’t subscribe to his exact take on what did or not constitute science fiction and I’m pretty sure he would have physically accosted me over my Quincy take had we not been in separate states. [I was in Texas, he was in Denial.])

This all being said—for no easily discernible reason—of course there can be Christian science fiction.  Fiction is a story someone made up.  To be at all palatable, it has to be set in some sort of setting.  That could be the above-referenced plaid-sky planet, a world where there are no deities or a world (or universe) where there is a deity.  Christian science fiction would, therefore, simply be a science fiction story that—in some way—subscribed to Christian tenets.

The funny (as in the sense of “ironic” rather than “ha-ha”) thing is that those who argue most vociferously against Christian science fiction are often the same people who will argue that the point of science fiction is to explore the possible and impossible, to speculate on what is or might be or never was.  In other words, they want limitless creativity … with limits.

Some will argue Christian science fiction is possible, there’s just never been any good Christian science fiction.  I’ll not deny that there has been bad Christian science fiction—by someone’s rubric—just as there has been bad agnostic or atheistic science fiction.  When I hear this argument being made (or that there are no more good westerns, romances, or military thrillers) I generally tune out because the speaker has already revealed their bias and their willingness to be dissuaded is not worth my effort.

Thinkers vs. Feelers

Thinkers and feelers who have the same end goal in mind can’t seem to get along.

I thought about that opening sentence being my headline, but I don’t like long headlines (long headlines used in the past not withstanding) because they make me think of either tabloids or The Onion.

Anyway, it’s been said that there are two kinds of people in this world: those who divide everyone into two categories and those who don’t.  With that in mind, I’m going to be one of those people and divide most church-going people into two (quite possibly ill-named) categories: thinkers and feelers.

Being overly-generalizing, the thinkers are those who prefer to approach all matters of spirituality, faith or the church in terms of facts and figures.  They really like apologetics, they tend to study their Bibles in an analytical and methodical fashion, and if given a choice they’re going to choose exegetical over topical every time when it comes to sermons.

Being an equal opportunity generalizer, the feelers prefer to approach the above from a standpoint of feelings.  A song or hymn, for instance, is usually appealing to them more in terms of how it “affects the spirit” than for it’s musical precision or lyrical rhyme scheme.

Both of these groups—within the church, anyway—have a sincere desire to grow closer to God, to be good Christians, and to see the people around them won to Christ.  Unfortunately, we spend most of our time with infighting, thwarting all three of those goals to one extent or another but—most especially—that one of winning others to Christ.

For instance, we recently went through Lee Strobel’s video series “The Case for Christ” at our church and discovered that “the thinkers” identified best with Lee and his analytical approach to “gospel discovery”: interviews, lots of reading, listed and annotated facts; while “the feelers” tended to identify more with Lee’s wife: not disdainful of the research, but more influenced by the movement of the Holy Spirit in a way that seems, to “the thinker”, to be pretty esoteric.

We had a good discussion Sunday night, but I’ve seen it too many times that the two groups can’t come together on this—and, you can tell, think little of the “opposing side” in the discussion (when, really, we shouldn’t even be in opposition).  The feelers think the thinkers have taken all the joy and spirit out of experiencing God and, by inference, begin to doubt whether the thinkers have the Holy Spirit in their lives at all.  The thinkers, at the same time, are thinking that the feelers have overemphasized non-quantifiable feelings to the point that they are no longer thinking at all and—by inference—are probably easily swayed in their thinking because they aren’t really thinking at all.  This, of course, is seen by anyone on the outside of the discussion as just one more thing to turn them off about church and faith.

I am pretty sure I fall into the “thinking” camp, but I am frequently reminded that I need the feelers.  I can get so wrapped up in my facts and figures that, while well informed, I start to become short on things like joy and compassion (even while being more convinced than ever before of the “facts of the gospel”).  The feelers I know, I am sure they need us thinkers around, too, so that their feelings don’t get carried away and overwhelm the gospel message.

[One of the problems, though, is that we’re both so convinced that our way is the right way that we begin to think we a] don’t need the other side because 2] our way is so perfect it won’t allow us to stumble.]

We’re told that iron sharpens iron, but if you’re sharpening a blade an even better substance is flint.  Maybe we need some iron around to keep us strong, but we also need some people around us who are striving for the same goal but built fundamentally different from us.

Which are you?  Wait, don't declare a side, just take a look at how bad you need the other side.

Is He Truly Evangelical?

Someone sent me an article last week about “6 Questions Evangelicals Are Going to Have to Answer” (or some such title).  They followed it up with another one, under a title like “50 Products Evangelicals Are Going to Have to Stop Buying.”

Note: that second article was rather sarcastic, poking fun at people who have boycotted one company because of their stance on some moral issue but continuing to patronize other companies with the same stance.

The articles were almost interesting enough to read all the way through, but they both assumed, as might be said on a lawyerly TV show, facts not in evidence.  Mainly, that I do not now and never have claimed to be an evangelical.  In fact, in 20+ years of ministry, I have only had one conversation about being evangelical.  It went something like this:

Church member: Well it just seems that if we’re going to call ourselves an evangelical church—

Me:  What?  When did we do that?

It was reminiscent of another time when a man who had been visiting the church for quite a while (along with his family, his son even playing on the “worship team”) asked me to come over to his house to talk about some thing.  I did and he began to bring up a point of doctrine he had heard me express in a sermon recently that he didn’t agree with.  He gave his view, I stated mine, then he said—with something like consternation—“But I’ve been in Baptist churches all my life and even went to a Baptist college and this is how it’s always done!”

I calmly told him, “But this isn’t a Baptist church and I’m not a Baptist.”  He had no idea what I meant.  In his mind, there was only one denomination in America: Baptists; and everyone believed the same.  Surprisingly, he continued to come to church with us but I’m not sure we ever convinced him we weren’t a Baptist church.

So, anyway, I read the articles with varying degrees of interest about which prominent preachers have or have not left “evangelicalism”.  Some of them I find interesting because the salient points are interesting: is this guy preaching universalism? Has this guy denied the virgin birth?  Is this guy saying that some sins aren’t sins anymore?  How come that one guy swears during interviews?  Isn’t he smart enough to think of better words?

In my own mind, I might ask the question, “Is what this guy (or gal) is teaching sound doctrine?”  If the answer seems to me—from my understanding of Scripture—to be “no” … I don’t know that I doubt their salvation but I do start taking anything else they have said or written with a grain of salt.  Are they still “good evangelicals”, though?  I don’t care.

“Evangelical” is not a Scriptural term.  And while it might have had some value and meaning at one time, in reality it’s just another buzz word that may well have outlived its shelf life because it no longer has an agreed-upon meaning.  Like “missional” or “seeker friendly” or “GWRBI”.

If someone asks me if I think Pastor __________ (fill in the blank of the favorite pastor flavor du jour) has left the evangelical reservation, I’ll ask what specific doctrinal point has them troubled and go from there.  If they call me “evangelical” (I don’t know why they would start now as I don’t think anyone ever has), I won’t be offended.  At most, I might ask them what they mean by it.  If they say I have left evangelicalism, I’ll do my best Jerry Seinfeld imitation and ask (at the top of my lungs), “How can I be outed?  I was never in!”

What do I call myself, if not evangelical, missional, or daoist (or whatever, I don’t mean to insult any daoists out there)?  It may be a cliché, but I like the old saying: “We are not the only Christians, but we are Christians only.”

Handouts Welcome, Help … Not So Much

Man shows up at the church office saying he needs help with gas money so he can get the kids to school.  Says he used to attend the church “years ago”.  I invite him in and try to engage him in conversation but he’s not interested.  “Can I get help or not?” he asks, with breath that smells like tobacco and clothes to match.

He’s in his own car, so I ask him to follow me to a nearby gas station, where I put twenty dollars in his tank and invite him to come and worship with us on Sunday.  He says he’ll be there, with his kids, and smiles in a friendly way as he drives off.

Six months later, the same guy shows up with the same story.  I almost hate to belabor the point of the smell, but it’s going to come up again.  And, for the record, I help a lot of people and some of them have had distinctive odors and some have not.  My nose doesn’t make the call of whether to help or not, but with this person it’s a detail that’s worth some comment … in a moment.

I talked to the man a bit, got no further than his need for gas to get the kids to school because the ex still isn’t paying child support.  Eventually, I ask him to follow me to the gas station and I put twenty dollars into the tank and invite him to worship with us and get the same semi-appreciative wave.  Oh well.  As stated, I—and the church where I serve—help a lot of people in this way.

As a church and as an individual, we help several people.  The family that shows up one Sunday morning saying they need some food for the kids, I ask them if they could stick around through church and then I’ll take them to get some food.  They do and I do.  The guy who’s coming through town on his way to his mother’s funeral and needs gas, we help.  Man shows up with his gas bill in hand and asking if we can help pay it, I go over to the gas company with him and pay his bill.  A couple shows up asking if there is some job they could do around the church to earn some money—they’re adamant they don’t want a handout—seemed like a godsend because we had a whole stack of tile that needed laying in the new bathroom and they know how to lay tile.  An hour later they’ve done an excellent job and won’t let me pay them—it’s their idea to go to the gas station and let me fill up their tank.  I buy them food and drinks, too, which they try to turn down.

It’s only a month later than our last encounter when the same guy from earlier calls up.  I’ve learned his name from previous “visits”.  He says his ex isn’t paying child support and he needs some food.  I invited him to church but he tells me he’s going to another church in town.  I say that’s great and tell him what time I’ll be by with food.  Right on time, I and one of the deacons show up with some grocery sacks full of staples (milk, bread, PB&J, cereal, cheese, etc.).  He opens the door and a] doesn’t invite us in and 2] we are hit by a wall cloud of tobacco smoke.  He takes the bags of food and hastily darts back inside as we invite him to church.  We can hear the lock being thrown.

Between talking to him on the phone and showing up with the food, I made a phone call.  I know the minister at the church where the man says he has been going.  I talk to the minister and he does indeed know the man.  The man came to church a couple times and always hit them up for food or gas then stopped coming to church but kept hitting them up for food or gas.

The last few times he’s called and asked for food or gas, I tell him to come to church on Sunday and, after church, we’ll set him up with what he needs.  I was worried at first that he might just show up when we’re getting out of service, but he hasn’t.  In fact, I haven’t seen him in several months except for one time when I passed him going into another ministry in town—on a weekday—where he hit them up for food and gas.

I’m not sure how to help this guy.  This is a small town and I have come to learn this man has a decent income and his house is paid for.  However, he’s spending several hundred dollars a month of that income on tobacco, which leaves him little for his gas and food needs.  [Don’t misunderstand me: I am not saying that tobacco use is, in and of itself, sinful.  However, if your choice is between feeding your family and tobacco and you choose tobacco, it’s clear to me that tobacco is your god.]

I don’t deny that this man needs help, but the help he needs, he’s not willing to accept.  Do I continue to subsidize his tobacco habit in hopes he’ll finally listen to the gospel?

Religion or Relationship?

“No more religion for me, I want a relationship!”  I’ve seen a post to that effect on several occasions lately on Facebook, posted by different people.

I get it.  The poster (one who posts, not the thing on the wall) is tired of unfulfilling rules and regulations and wants a two-way street and conversation with their Creator.  I firmly believe that’s what God wants with us, too.

I just don’t like the saying because, of the two words, which one is advocated for all believers in Scripture?  I’ll give you a hint: it’s not “relationship”.*

When we think of “religion”, though, what do we think of?  Rules and regulation.  Forms that are more important than the function they were (supposedly) instituted to serve.  Pomp and circumstance signifying nothing (if I may mangle the Bard).

How does the Bible describe religion?  “If anyone thinks he is religious and does not bridle his tongue but deceives his heart, this person's religion is worthless.  Religion that is pure and undefiled before God, the Father, is this: to visit orphans and widows in their affliction, and to keep oneself unstained from the world.”  (James 1:26-27 English Standard Version)

Two things strike me right off.  First, God doesn’t think any more highly of useless religions than we do.  People who tell themselves—and anyone else—that they are religious but still act and talk like the unsaved have a worthless religion.

Second, there is a religion God likes, and advocates: taking care of people who need taking care of and keeping ourselves pure.

Let me take that inside-out for a moment and stress “keeping ourselves pure.”  One of the bad connotations that comes to mind when thinking of “religion” in a negative light is the guy in the cowl (or Armani suit, clothing intended to indicate his authority and superiority) shouting out “Thou shalt not!!”  In other words, someone else telling us how to live.  James—writing, as I firmly believe, with the authority of the Holy Spirit—wants us to monitor ourselves.

Now, back to the first part of that directive: taking care of orphans and widows.  Most of our churches (another word I don’t like) are known, first of all, for size and worship style.  Sometimes for doctrine.  These all have their place and it’s stupid to claim we aren’t swayed by them, but wouldn’t it be great to be known first and foremost as an assembly or individual who takes care of the needy?  “2^nd Church?  Yeah, I’ve heard of them.  Aren’t they the one that has the clothes drive for kids?”

Unfortunately, we’ve let the world co-opt the word “religion”.  We’re visiting with someone and they say, “You’re pretty religious, aren’t you?”  We mumble and hem and haw because we’re pretty sure they just insulted us.  Or we’re thinking that what they’re thinking of is “religion” defined by rules and regulations and meaningless things.  Wouldn’t it be great if someone said, “You’re pretty religious” because they saw us building a handicapped ramp on a widow’s house or taking her to her doctor’s appointment?

I want a relationship with God.  I pursue one every day in prayer and in Bible study, but having read the Bible I realize that God, like us, telegraphs how he wants to be related to.  It took me a while to learn that as a husband but I eventually learned that the way my wife wanted to be loved was not always intuitive to me.  I had to finally ask her what she wanted, what I could do to show her that I loved her?

David realized this—to his own surprise—that God didn’t want sacrifices.  “Sacrifice and offering you did not desire—but my ears you have opened—burnt offerings and sin offerings  you did not require. Then I said, ‘Here I am, I have come—it is written about me in the scroll. I desire to do your will, my God; your law is within my heart.’”  (Psalm 40:6-8 New International Version)

God seeks a relationship with us and one of the primary ways he wants us to show him love is by showing love to other people—especially those who are downtrodden.  It’s why he spends so much of his word in telling us how to treat other people.  In other words, he doesn’t want us to reject religion, he wants us to find it!  But not the world’s definition of religion, his!

The next time someone tells me they want a relationship instead of religion, I think I’ll tell them I want both.  I want a relationship built on the religion God is looking for and I want a religion that strengthens my relationship to my God.

One without the other is useless.

* OK, if you went and looked up “relationship” in your concordance, you found that it shows up 6 times in the NIV.  But look at those 6.  4 of them refer to relationships with other people.  One speaks of the relationship between Jesus and God and one indicates that Solomon’s life was such that it indicated a relationship existed between him and God.

Little Things?

The appeal goes out.  2^nd National Church is doing something they would like to have the other churches in town involved in.  Sounds good!

Somewhere in the appeal, though, is a statement like, “Let’s gather around what unites us rather than what divides us!”  That sounds like a good idea, but what does it mean?

In theory, it means that what unites us—one God, one Jesus who is our savior—is bigger than all the things we tend to squabble about.  It’s a wonderful thought and one we (speaking as Christian) ascribe to happily, whole-heartedly even.

Too often, though, what either the person saying it means or the person hearing it hears is, “Unite around what’s important to me rather than what’s important to you.  (Because what’s important to you isn’t very important and, really, is kinda stupid.)"  Of course, no one is crass enough to say that, but …

I was part of a ministerial alliance once wherein someone proposed that we—the churches of the town—get together and put on a “Christian parade.”  The route was going to be from 1^st Methodist to 1^st Baptist—which would wend throughout downtown—and the floats were to be presented by the churches of the town.  It was going to be a chance for Christians to show off that we can a] have fun and 2] come together.  At the church where the parade was to end, there would be a picnic and all the churches would get together and fellowship and maybe sing and it’d be a great thing.

The ministers were on board, until …

It started to unravel when someone suggested that, in the parking lot where the parade was to end, they were going to put up a horse trough and baptize anyone who wanted to be baptized.  Someone objected to this because they believed that no one should be baptized without extensive counseling.  Another person objected because the church he represented sprinkled rather than immersed.

The parade never happened.

To the person(s) who doesn’t see baptism as that big a deal, it probably seems like a silly thing to torpedo an idea over.  Maybe it was, but the people on both sides of the issue saw baptism as part of the larger picture of salvation.  Some said it was necessary for salvation, some said it wasn’t, but they all had a definite opinion on the matter.

Baptism.  Immersion.  Sprinkling.  Wine.  Grape juice.  Hymns.  Praise music.  Preaching.  Teaching.  Prophesying.  Gifts.  Tongues.  Healings.  Women.  Men.  Children.

I agree that the Lordship of Jesus Christ, and the fact of his being the only begotten Son of God, is bigger than any of these issues.  But can we at least stop pretending that what someone else believes about these things isn’t a big deal?  Maybe it’s not as important as Jesus (I can guarantee it’s not as important as Jesus) but it’s important to whoever brought it up.  Instead of an elephant in the room, maybe we’re elephants and we need to deal with the mice in the room.

Reviewing “Hydroland” by Justin Martin & Mel Todd

            a review of the preview by Sam White

A powerless member of the new media, I was given the gracious opportunity to preview an upcoming comic book by the above-mentioned Martin & Todd called “Hydroland”.  Briefly, Hydroland is the story of a people who live in the water.  They’ve lived in peace until, suddenly they are invaded.

Now, the preview I got to see gives some hints at what the invasion is (thematically) but not how it is carried out practically—in the comic book, anyway.  I won’t give that away, except to say that it’s going to take some skill to carry out.  These guys have it, I think (they tell a good preview, anyway), but it’s tough.  How many times in school were you shown a painting or read a poem and the teacher told you about all the deep, sensual or violent undertones and you sat there thinking, “I thought it was about a basketball that’s gone flat.”  And try as you might, you can never see anything other than the flat basketball.

Martin and Todd are creating (the full book’s not out, yet) an ambitious story of sin and redemption, couched in a story of an underwater society and depicted in an artistic style that is reminiscent of the best of R. Crumb’s work but (IMHO) more cheerful, even when the story itself takes a grim turn.  The bits of artwork we get to see in this preview (download the preview for free here: http://comics.drivethrustuff.com/product_info.php?products_id=99418) are intriguing and make me anxious to see the finished product (many of the pics in this download are production art, but I love looking at that kind of thing and seeing how an artist goes from pre-production to post-).