3.16.2004
What you could be reading
Here are some of my favorite "Christian" authors because they use fiction to ask questions that most Christian authors are afraid to touch.
John Grisham
The Testament - one man's spiritual journey to find meaning in life
The Chamber - a question of what makes for justice and why we might want to rethink the death penalty because sometimes even when it's done right it's done wrong.
Mary Doria Russell (Catholic Science Fiction)
The Sparrow - A question of what happens when you live by faith and are abandoned by God? How do you react.
The Children of God - Who are Christians? What is Redemption? What excesses are we capable of under the guise of righteous indignation?
Orson Scott Card (Mormon Science Fiction)
The Homecoming Series - A retelling of the book of Nephi from the Book of Mormon with some hard questions on the nature of our free will and God's sovereignty
Maps in a Mirror and other Short Stories - an anthology of some interesting questions about living out our faith in a consistent way
Ender's Game, and all the other books in the series (Xenocide, The Children of the Mind, Ender's Shadow, Shadow of the Hegemon, Shadow Puppets) which are about a lot of morality issues. Very good set of books.
Arthur C. Clarke & Gentry Lee (Buddhist Science Fiction)
The Rama Series - you can skip Rama and pick up Rama II, Rama Revealed, Bright Messengers and all the other books in the series. Read them in order and ask yourself the question, is it any wonder people have God all around them and still fail to notice him?
Stephen R. Donaldson (Agnostic fantasy)
The Chronicles of Thomas Covenant the Unbeliever - this is two sets of trilogies with an anti-hero in the central role and explores the notion of agnosticism in the face of contrary facts.
Reave the Just and other stories - is one of the finest anthologies of Christian themes written by a non-Christian I have ever read. I would recommend as one of the most significant stories in the entire list so far "Penance" in this volume as one of the most significant. It is about a vampire in search of redemption and has more to say about God's grace than anything I have ever read. The last time I read the story, I literally wept at the message it conveyed.
Happy reading.
Here are some of my favorite "Christian" authors because they use fiction to ask questions that most Christian authors are afraid to touch.
John Grisham
The Testament - one man's spiritual journey to find meaning in life
The Chamber - a question of what makes for justice and why we might want to rethink the death penalty because sometimes even when it's done right it's done wrong.
Mary Doria Russell (Catholic Science Fiction)
The Sparrow - A question of what happens when you live by faith and are abandoned by God? How do you react.
The Children of God - Who are Christians? What is Redemption? What excesses are we capable of under the guise of righteous indignation?
Orson Scott Card (Mormon Science Fiction)
The Homecoming Series - A retelling of the book of Nephi from the Book of Mormon with some hard questions on the nature of our free will and God's sovereignty
Maps in a Mirror and other Short Stories - an anthology of some interesting questions about living out our faith in a consistent way
Ender's Game, and all the other books in the series (Xenocide, The Children of the Mind, Ender's Shadow, Shadow of the Hegemon, Shadow Puppets) which are about a lot of morality issues. Very good set of books.
Arthur C. Clarke & Gentry Lee (Buddhist Science Fiction)
The Rama Series - you can skip Rama and pick up Rama II, Rama Revealed, Bright Messengers and all the other books in the series. Read them in order and ask yourself the question, is it any wonder people have God all around them and still fail to notice him?
Stephen R. Donaldson (Agnostic fantasy)
The Chronicles of Thomas Covenant the Unbeliever - this is two sets of trilogies with an anti-hero in the central role and explores the notion of agnosticism in the face of contrary facts.
Reave the Just and other stories - is one of the finest anthologies of Christian themes written by a non-Christian I have ever read. I would recommend as one of the most significant stories in the entire list so far "Penance" in this volume as one of the most significant. It is about a vampire in search of redemption and has more to say about God's grace than anything I have ever read. The last time I read the story, I literally wept at the message it conveyed.
Happy reading.
3.11.2004
Good God - Bad God
I see this come up from time to time on the various lists I'm on - the idea that the God of the Old Testament and the God of the New Testament are somehow two different Gods or at least two very different portrayals of God. The OT God is supposed to be lean & mean, judgmental and thundering fire & brimstone from on high. The NT God is all sweetness & light, lovey-dovey and cozy warm. Here are my comments that I posted to faithmaps on the topic.
I'm a bit of a stickler (in a good way) about distinguishing what others portray as caricatured versions of the testaments and what the actual content of the writings contain themselves. IOW, actually reading the material helps dispel some of the Christian "urban legends" about the Bible.
Here are some examples -
The entire book of Jonah where the prophet wanted God to rain down judgment on barbarian savages that destroyed his country but noooooooo God had to go and spare the capital of one of the most cruel civilizations ever to populate the Middle East.
The entire book of Hosea where the prophet marries a whore and even redeems her from her pimp after she bears him children who may or may not be his own and abandons him as a lesson for how deeply God loves unworthy Judah and
how she treats her God.
The fact that Pharaoh had TEN (count 'em TEN) chances to let Israel escape slavery and when he either refused or reneged EVERY SINGLE TIME, somehow God ends up with the black eye in this one for killing the Egyptian firstborn? And who was it that ordered Hebrew infanticide? And yet God is the one called cruel in all this? He as much as said "pretty please with sugar on top" before gradually applying steadily increasing means of pressure to express his power. So why is God the bad guy here and not Pharaoh?
It seems like folks all know what the Bible says without going to all the trouble of reading it. And those who do read it, do so selectively with a bias in mind before letting the text speak for itself. They seem to bring a lot of Christian baggage into a book that has absolutely no anticiaption of Christianity as we know it.
I see this come up from time to time on the various lists I'm on - the idea that the God of the Old Testament and the God of the New Testament are somehow two different Gods or at least two very different portrayals of God. The OT God is supposed to be lean & mean, judgmental and thundering fire & brimstone from on high. The NT God is all sweetness & light, lovey-dovey and cozy warm. Here are my comments that I posted to faithmaps on the topic.
I'm a bit of a stickler (in a good way) about distinguishing what others portray as caricatured versions of the testaments and what the actual content of the writings contain themselves. IOW, actually reading the material helps dispel some of the Christian "urban legends" about the Bible.
Here are some examples -
The entire book of Jonah where the prophet wanted God to rain down judgment on barbarian savages that destroyed his country but noooooooo God had to go and spare the capital of one of the most cruel civilizations ever to populate the Middle East.
The entire book of Hosea where the prophet marries a whore and even redeems her from her pimp after she bears him children who may or may not be his own and abandons him as a lesson for how deeply God loves unworthy Judah and
how she treats her God.
The fact that Pharaoh had TEN (count 'em TEN) chances to let Israel escape slavery and when he either refused or reneged EVERY SINGLE TIME, somehow God ends up with the black eye in this one for killing the Egyptian firstborn? And who was it that ordered Hebrew infanticide? And yet God is the one called cruel in all this? He as much as said "pretty please with sugar on top" before gradually applying steadily increasing means of pressure to express his power. So why is God the bad guy here and not Pharaoh?
It seems like folks all know what the Bible says without going to all the trouble of reading it. And those who do read it, do so selectively with a bias in mind before letting the text speak for itself. They seem to bring a lot of Christian baggage into a book that has absolutely no anticiaption of Christianity as we know it.
