Fantastical Truth

In episode 7, we promised our next episode would focus on Frank E. Peretti’s This Present Darkness.

But first, a word from our biggest news of 2020.

In this episode, E. Stephen Burnett and Zackary Russell share a few “favorite” pandemic stories, including the recent Planet of the Apes film trilogy and Tosca Lee’s 2019 novel The Line Between.

These stories can actually help Christians prepare our imaginations for these trials—or even worse suffering.

These truth glimpses give The Line Between surprising heart-warmth amongst the chill, while its road-trip quest drives fast through mad territory and never once feels bogged down in snowbanks. Even by the finale, we get hints that our heroes have learned that yes, sometimes you must stay preserved from a world gone mad, but for the greater mission of helping others in that world. As Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn wrote, you can’t simply separate from evil people—not even cultists—in order to avoid evil. That very line between evil and good cuts through every human heart.

Most of us don’t give focused thought to evil and suffering until we experience them. This forces us to formulate perspective on the fly, at a time when our thinking is muddled and we’re exhausted and consumed by pressing issues. Readers who have “been there” will attest that it’s far better to think through suffering in advance.

—Randy Alcorn, If God is Good, page 14

For I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worth comparing with the glory that is to be revealed to us. For the creation waits with eager longing for the revealing of the sons of God. For the creation was subjected to futility, not willingly, but because of him who subjected it, in hope that the creation itself will be set free from its bondage to corruption and obtain the freedom of the glory of the children of God. For we know that the whole creation has been groaning together in the pains of childbirth until now. And not only the creation, but we ourselves, who have the firstfruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly as we wait eagerly for adoption as sons, the redemption of our bodies. For in this hope we were saved. Now hope that is seen is not hope. For who hopes for what he sees? But if we hope for what we do not see, we wait for it with patience.

—Romans 8:18–25

When he opened the fourth seal, I heard the voice of the fourth living creature say, “Come!” And I looked, and behold, a pale horse! And its rider’s name was Death, and Hades followed him. And they were given authority over a fourth of the earth, to kill with sword and with famine and with pestilence and by wild beasts of the earth.

—Revelation 6:7–8 (emphasis added)

This month we’re releasing our next Lorehaven issue. Its cover story explores our favorite Christian-made fantastical novels. This includes that classic of the 1980s, Frank Peretti’s This Present Darkness, a classic (especially for Christians!) supernatural thriller that asks: What If the Armies of Hell Tried to Invade Your Hometown? Lorehaven’s review chief, Austin Gunderson, will join the podcast to explore the Peretti-verse with us.

Behold the not-shortest episode of Fantastical Truth. This time we delve into the deep-doctrine magic of God’s gift of human imagination.

This time we’re joined by biblical/supernatural novelist and nonfiction author Brian Godawa.

Tell all the truth but tell it slant —

We have to go back to Genesis to learn how God created humans.

The idea of “image” is right there at the start because we ourselves are “images” of God. Little finite reflections of the almighty Creator? It sounds absurd (and some folks called Gnostics indeed think it’s very unspiritual).

Humans made in God’s image, the imago Dei, was God’s idea. Humans “image” or reflect God back to him.

This is solid theology. God wants to see reflections of himself because we reflect back his glory. God is all about maximizing his name/glory in universe.

How do we reflect God? By behaving as he does. By reflecting back his character and qualities. First thing God commands is not “be holy” or “be loving” like I am. (That comes later.) His first command: be fruitful, multiply, steward creation, use what I’ve created to make things of your own.

These include images. And written language.

Sin comes into the world. We must acknowledge this. All our culture-making and image-bearing is now marred by rebellion against our Creator.

But culture-making continues. People make instruments, and likely also images of things. Fast-forwarding past Flood, Babel, Abraham, patriarchs, Exodus: God calls out his covenant people and gives them moral commands.

Then God gets to work commanding his people to make images, such as in the Tabernacle and with Bezalel.

Also we read about the Passover, one of the most incredible acted-out images in all Scripture. This practice lasted generations in Israel until Jesus came thousands of years later to fulfill it. Without this image (described to us in words), we wouldn’t have the expectation of Jesus, and the knowledge (after the fact) that all of this realized imagination was meant all along to point to Jesus the fulfillment.

Now that Jesus has completed God’s mission of salvation, we start to recover a worshipful, Jesus-centered vision of God’s gifts, including imagination. We can enjoy this gift in ways that help us draw closer to the God who gave them.

Still, images are powerful. God uses them alongside rationality. (Example: Jesus taught in parables of images, and didactic teaching.)

But apart from rationality, images can become dangerous and idolatrous.

Solution: Always, always remember your created purpose. You are created to be an image, a reflection, of God your Creator. And in a world full of broken images, if you are a Christian, you have also been redeemed by Jesus. He is the image of the invisible God (Colossians 1:15) and “Just as we have borne the image of the man of dust, we shall also bear the image of the man of heaven” (1 Corinthians 15:49). When we bear his image, we start to see all other images people have made in perspective. We can start to reject idols and redeem good images.

This includes sharing stories that glorify God by marrying, not divorcing, the two gifts he’s given us: rationality in written language and precision, and imagination with creative picture-making. These two “realms” will be brought together.

It’s only after Jesus renews all of planet Earth, and the whole cosmos, that we have God’s gift of imagination fully restored to us.

We’ll see no more idolatry of imagination or the things people make.

We’ll have no more tensions between being creative and doing whatever we can to put food on the table.

And we’ll no longer suffer pain or crying or sickness or death, which can really interrupt that creative output.

Instead, Jesus will restore his people so they will be fit to live in his restored universe, the New Heavens and New Earth, forever.

We originally promised an episode about Frank E. Peretti’s This Present Darkness. But first, a word from our biggest news of 2020. We share a few “favorite” pandemic stories, including the recent Planet of the Apes film trilogy and Tosca Lee’s 2019 novel The Line Between. How can pandemic fiction help us seek God’s strength in scary times?[1. Original text: This month we’re releasing our next Lorehaven issue. Its cover story explores our favorite Christian-made fantastical novels. This includes that classic of the 1980s, Frank Peretti’s This Present Darkness, a classic (especially for Christians!) supernatural thriller that asks: What If the Armies of Hell Tried to Invade Your Hometown? Lorehaven’s review chief, Austin Gunderson, will join the podcast to explore the Peretti-verse with us.]

This time it’s personal: Fantastical Truth shares some of your stories about how you first discovered amazing fiction.

Meanwhile, hosts E. Stephen Burnett and Zackary Russell share their early joy in niche and popular fantastical fiction, including:

So many of you have sent us your fantasy origin stories, so we’ll share more of those during future episodes.

On Tuesday, March 10, Brian Godawa (Chronicles of the Nephilim fiction series, The Imagination of God nonfiction) joins Fantastical Truth. We’ll explore some deep doctrine magic: How does Jesus define and redeem his gift of imagination?

As Fantastical Truth leaves far behind our one-month mark of podcasting, we’re already planning beyond episode 6.

In our next episode, however, we want to feature listeners even more.

Our topic: fan origin stories.

We’re asking: how did you first discover fantastical fiction?

We’d love to hear your origin story, which could include elements like:

We’d love to hear your story! And of course we may share your story in the next Fantastical Truth episode, to be heard by hundreds of other fantastical story fans.

You can use this page’s comment section. Or use the form here to send your note straight to the Fantastical Truth mailbag.

Or send us a note @Lorehaven on Twitter, or at LorehavenMag on the Facebooks.

This time, we’re taking up another big theme: the challenges of “mature” fantasy action drama stories like The Witcher.

This fantasy drama arrived on Netflix just before Christmas 2019.

It’s the latest of several fantasy TV series which seem to be following in the footsteps of Game of Thrones.

Neither cohost (E. Stephen Burnett and Zackary Russell) has seen the show. So Stephen speaks with someone who has: Jason Morehead.

Jason says: “I simply don’t like trashing stuff. I always try to find a few good things about whatever I review…I’d much rather write about stuff I love, than trash stuff I hate.”

Still, there’s plenty to challenge about Netflix’s latest grim fantasy world.

Slogan fact-check: true. But do sexually explicit stories themselves create monsters?

We discuss feedback from Facebook commenter Jeremy B.:

I’m gonna have to disagree. Oh, I agree that there’s A LOT of sex and nudity — way more than I would be comfortable with in the real world — but the world of the Witcher is NOT the real world, and it’s not intended to be. Rather, it’s intended to be VERY different, and we’re not intended to be PARTY to that world but distant SPECTATORS to it. So while it all seems gratuitous to US, the question we need to be asking is, is it gratuitous to the characters that LIVE there? And in my opinion, no, it is not.

We discuss feedback from Facebook commenter Andy S.:

Spot on. I made it to the beginning of Episode 3 before I got creeped out by the ‘serious’ and ‘adult’ imagery. It looked less adult, and more like something I would’ve come up with when I was 14. I’m genuinely resentful of this idea that any story with swords also has to show female nudity. Yes, Game of Thrones was successful. So was The Lord of the Rings. Show some imagination.

We also explore these gritty, real facts about what it takes to make shows that feature private acts made public:

More articles about this grim reality:

Either way, we’d like to hear from you. Comment here.

And of course, subscribe to the Fantastical Truth podcast on any podcasting platform. Get new episodes every Tuesday.

Next time on Fantastical Truth, we’re asking: how did you first discover fantastical fiction?

We’d love to hear your origin story, which could include elements like:

Again: comment below, or use our form to send your story straight to Fantastical Truth.

We sort through the top ten 2019 articles on Speculative Faith. Then hosts Zack Russell and E. Stephen Burnett count down the top debates we expect to see continue this year.

Seven of these top articles at SpecFaith focused on big current or ongoing debates.

What’s your favorite topic from this list? Let us know, using the form or comments section below.

We might do an episode on the topic with the most votes.

Next time on Fantastical Truth, we will explore a newly arrived fantasy show, The Witcher. Our guest Jason Morehead wrote this article, Giving Up On the Witcher, and helps guide Christian viewers in evaluating otherwise promising stories that get sidetracked by exploitation.

For episode 3, we dive into another fantastic Christian-made novel: Sharon Hinck’s fantasy Hidden Current.

In fact, Hidden Current just released last week, from Enclave Publishing.

(We’ll explore books like this every so often, when we find great Christian-made titles we’ve loved and that Lorehaven reviews.)

For this episode, Zack Russell and E. Stephen Burnett are joined by their first Fantastical Truth guest, Lacy Rhiannon. She taught dance for many years, loves fantastical stories, and helps out with Lorehaven (and happens to be Stephen’s wife and best friend).

Key theme: What if dancing could control the world?

When your every foot movement and gesture literally controls your world, people will expect you to avoid any false move. But for dancer Calara Blue, her trained pursuit of perfection has come at a terrible cost.

At the center of Calara’s world, the all-powerful Order has called the best dancers to use their natural abilities to stabilize their island. Without dancers who command the storms and the island’s very position, the island and its ecosystem will drift out of control. So dancers like Calara have pledged their lives to fulfill this high calling.

Then, just as Calara reaches her goal, she discovers that, just maybe, the island does not want to be controlled. Instead, she is forced into fleeing her rigid lifestyle with its every rule and religious belief that she has spent years helping to enforce. Accompanied by a mysterious fisherman, Calara hunts for her own past and for the truth about her beautiful yet dehumanized profession—and its original purpose.

Read the complete review in Lorehaven magazine (subscribe free).

For the cover story, we also interviewed Sharon Hinck about her story’s inspirations.

From left: Zackary Russell, Lacy Rhiannon, E. Stephen Burnett

“Then Miriam the prophetess, the sister of Aaron, took a tambourine in her hand, and all the women went out after her with tambourines and dancing.”

“You have turned for me my mourning into dancing; you have loosed my sackcloth and clothed me with gladness.”

“Let them praise his name with dancing, making melody to him with tambourine and lyre!”

“Praise him with tambourine and dance; praise him with strings and pipe!”

“Again I will build you, and you shall be built, O virgin Israel! Again you shall adorn yourself with tambourines and shall go forth in the dance of the merrymakers.”

These mentions of dance in Scripture only make sense when you fit them into the bigger biblical idea: that God made humans to be creative in his image (Genesis 1:28).

Theologians call this the Cultural Mandate.

That’s why we have cultural forms. That’s why we have creative gifts and imagination.

Even in Genesis, after the fall, we see the narrators summarizing these amazing cultures that made technology and musical instruments.

Why would God include those histories? I think it’s a reminder of a lost world.

All that music (and dancing, and art) has been lost. That’s tragic. Because of sin.

Some Christians from sheltered/legalistic environments sometimes wake up and think something like: “Hey, all that stuff was actually good all along, so let’s just accept it all!”

Well, that’s a baby step in the right direction.

But you have to run the whole way, away from the notion of “it’s all evil” but past the equally silly notion of “it’s all good.”

You have to get to the biblical concept that God gives these gifts, man corrupts them, but Jesus redeems them.

No spoilers, but I love how Sharon Hinck explores this in particular in Hidden Current.

Tell us your experience with dance. Do you dance? Wish you could? Grow up loving it, hating it, or indifferent?

If you grew up Christian, did your church acknowledge singing and dance in worship?

Or did Christian leaders condemn dance based on sinful abuses of it (cough, cough, halftime shows, anyone?).

Next time on Fantastical Truth, we will explore more than seven big topics (and debates) Christian fantasy fans had throughout 2019, like:

In Fantastical Truth’s second weekly episode, your hosts (E. Stephen Burnett and Zackary Russell) take on a big theme.

(We do this because exploring these big themes will help us be happier, holier, and more like Jesus. That way, we can get even more beauty and truth out of these stories.)

Christian fans often discuss and debate this question:

What do we mean by saying that a story is “a Christian story”?

Also: should Christian fans feel they should “look for the Christian label”?

Many people say they prefer avoiding the label:

They might say, “We don’t need any more Christian stories. We just need more good stories that happen to be made by Christians.”

Others parody this line, such as the Babylon Bee article “Man Not A ‘Christian Pastor’—He’s A Pastor Who Happens To Be Christian.”

So let’s talk about what images/meanings we have when we say “a Christian story” or “a Christian movie.”

First, let’s stop by a Fantastical Truth podcast on again/off again feature. We’ll call this The Concession Stand.

Stephen uses the term Christian story (or Christian book, and so on) simply to mean: A story or book made by a Christian.

Zack offers a different or expanded definition. He ranks “Christian stories” is an image of concentric circles:

We explore several possible examples of each kind of story.

However we define Christian story, or whatever meanings we attach to the term, we recommend this:

That’s a big topic. You’ve heard our takes. Now we want to hear yours.

We’ll explore another great book we’ve found, called Hidden Current from Sharon Hinck. This fantasy novel poses the question: What if dancing could control the world? So we’ll talk about dance cults (as one does) and try not to step on too many toes while we explore the whole idea of dance and what purpose this gift serves.

Hosts E. Stephen Burnett and Zackary Russell launch Lorehaven’s new Fantastical Truth podcast by exploring Patrick W. Carr’s novel The End of the Magi.

This biblical historical fiction brings the question: What if the three wise men actually wanted to crown a king?

Also:

Life should be simple if you’re a member of the biblical Magi. You come out of the box once every Christmas, and you get to wear a cool turban and ride a cool camel. You get a simple quest to seek the Christ-child with only some minor Herod-related villainy to make things interesting. Then you return home by a different route.

So it should seem, if you only read Matthew 2 and/or install a Nativity scene. But for young Myrad, who actually lives in the Parthian Empire, reality is far more brutal.

Myrad is a Gentile but the adopted son of a Jewish magus. As magi, they’re bonded to tell the truth, seek the stars, and track the calendar left by the prophet Daniel plotting the number of years until the Messiah finally arrives to establish his kingdom. They also counsel earthly kings, such as the Parthian ruler, Phraates.

Unfortunately, Phraates has been influenced by the neighborhood’s latest upstart empire, Rome. Which results in the king, enraged at certain magi’s opposition to his foolish alliance, declaring treason and slaughtering nearly every magus he can find.

Our hero Myrad ends up fatherless, homeless, and on the run. Restricted by his clubfoot, he soon joins the caravan of wise tradesman Walagash and his steadfast daughter, Roshan. They’ll face deserts, revolutions, and the friendships and threats of other magi as they work their way toward Jerusalem and that mysterious star.

Get the complete review in Lorehaven magazine’s winter 2019 issue.

Stephen read and liked the book, partly for these reasons:

We’ll explore a big question that Christian fantasy fans can’t stop talking about: Should Christians “look for the Christian label” for novels, movies, music and other things that Christian creators make? How do we recognize our own associations with the label—such as a “seal of quality” or a “seal” that guarantees anything but quality?

In the Fantastical Truth podcast from Lorehaven, hosts E. Stephen Burnett and Zackary Russell find truth in fantastic stories, and apply the wonders of these imaginary worlds to the real world our Creator has called us to serve. Join the best Christian fantastical authors and other creative friends on this joyful journey, to find the happiness and holiness of Jesus through his gift of truthful imagination.