Christian genre: why is it so bad and how to write it well?

Discussion in 'Genre Discussions' started by Mckk, Oct 11, 2014.

  1. Killer300

    Killer300 Senior Member

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    I hear someone called for a neighborhood friendly atheist.:p

    More seriously, as an atheist, I view luck as a result of physics interactions, like stuff with Chaos Theory, and randomness(chaos and randomness apparently aren't the same, but lets stay away from that bugbear for now). So, luck is perfectly acceptable within the boundaries of science really.

    I think I'd want to see something that perhaps took stories from the Bible and explored them in a new light, or tried to explore Christian themes in a new way. To make it more explicitly Christian if you will...

    Well, why not explore the very nature of God? For example, something I've thought of as a question is, why is God called he? Would a being like the Christian God really have gender in the way society views it? God never seems to be a sexual being, to my knowledge, or have any other reason to be called, "he." Perhaps there's something blindingly obvious in the context of the Bible I'm missing, but I'm trying to show the perspective of someone outside of Christianity looking in, if you will.

    Following the line of thought I'm sure could get interesting questions, and a potentially amazing story, none of which would be anti-Christian in of themselves.
     
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  2. Killer300

    Killer300 Senior Member

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    (Placeholder, original post isn't necessary.)
     
    Last edited: Oct 16, 2014
  3. Selbbin

    Selbbin The Moderating Cat Staff Contributor Contest Winner 2023

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    The other thing is that, as writers, we can be humble enough to leave personal opinion out of the lives of our characters. I'm a staunch atheist, although I despise being labelled for simply not doing something. Like being a non-plumber. So, for the benefit of this thread, I am an atheist. Also, this thread, and no thread really unless specifically designed, is suitable for a debate about who is right. Because, frankly, it cannot be 'won'. Anyway, as an 'atheist' it is still important for me as a human to understand the thinking behind various opinions, be they religious, cultural, or social, especially those which contradict my own. This opens me up to explore those elements in fiction. Ok, so the point of my dumb rant is this:

    My MC is devoutly religious, and hopefully I have written her in a way that supports, not condones or mocks, her belief. I know that not being christian myself may cause some alarm bells, but she, like any person of religion, does not need to make it an overbearing point of her personality. Also, it was never my intention. It just happened. I just started to build her as a girl of faith. It simply is who she is and simmers beneath her skin, supporting and influencing her actions and behavior. Luckily I have friends who are also devout, so I do have first hand observational awareness of how faith influences thought. Just because you are of one particular line of thought doesn't mean you cannot represent another with dignity and respect. And that goes the other way too. A lot of Christian media is too preachy, which alienates 'non-believers'. But then again, lots of christian media is aimed at only Christians anyway, which is fair enough. But being single minded and pandering to a particular audience by giving them exactly what they want and refusing to challenge their sensibilities = dull. In my modest, but incredibly astute and amazingly enlightened opinion, anyway. ;)
     
    Last edited: Oct 16, 2014
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  4. Shadowfax

    Shadowfax Contributor Contributor

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    A few years ago I read a chess book which pointed out that there is no such thing as bad luck in chess - because you were in complete control when you made that stupid mistake - but there's any amount of good luck, because your opponent may, or may not, see the trap you've laid for him. I gave up chess when I realised that I was just sitting there, hoping for my opponent NOT to see the good move that I could see for him, and relying on luck.

    Getting back to the point, good luck for me in a chess match is NOT bad luck for my opponent, it's his own stupid (and I mean that quite literally) fault. Should I thank God for that?

    In general, "luck" is just random chance...if you're the sole survivor of some catastrophe, you might consider yourself lucky, but what about the thousand casualties? How lucky were they?
     
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  5. Lemex

    Lemex That's Lord Lemex to you. Contributor

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    I apologize to anyone offended by an earlier post of mine. It was childishly worded, and I'm sorry.
     
  6. Link the Writer

    Link the Writer Flipping Out For A Good Story. Contributor

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    If it was the post about 'putting your cock away', I was more disturbed by the mental image you painted rather than your post. :D
     
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  7. Mckk

    Mckk Member Supporter Contributor

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    @Aled James Taylor - Hm, well it seems like we've both crossed our wires. I wasn't making a point with the pilot story - I was stating my first reaction to hearing it, as someone who is a Christian, and actually afterwards, I revised my thoughts on it because I realised my reaction is not the only "correct" one. I realised that different interpretations are possible because not everyone draws conclusions from the same set of beliefs as I do. If anything, I was validating the thoughts of an atheist, and actually saying it might be or at least seem nonsensical to have the reaction that I did initially.

    I hope that clarifies things :)

    As for your questions - I do accept and respect your beliefs. I've already engaged with a number of non-Christians about Christianity on this thread. Certainly I do not ask you to agree with me - and besides, what kinda discussion would that be, eh? :p What offended me was the way you posed those questions - you wrote those questions not really to ask a question, but they were rhetorical questions. Rhetorical questions are by their very nature meant to lead the reader to its "natural conclusion". The only natural conclusions I got from those questions were, "Christians are stupid/irrational/ignorant."

    And that's what I found offensive. It is not that you disagree with me that I find offensive. However, thank you for stating that that was not what you meant - clarifications are always good and it was my misunderstanding :) probably because it is a sensitive topic, after all.

    @Shadowfax - well, I'm not sure someone else's bad luck means there can't be good luck for you. And I don't think chess is about luck - luck is involved in ANY game, if you think about it. You're betting on someone else's skill not being as good as your own. So I'm not sure I get why you gave up chess unless you also went on to giving up all other games lol :p It's about trying to outwit each other. I guess you could take it as strategic gambling? Gambling with rules that allows one to manipulate, to some extent, whether they win or not.

    From a Christian POV, yes, you can certainly thank God for winning a game of chess. Perhaps your opponent would have seen something, perhaps you would've made a mistake on your part - but God could've had a hand in why your opponent made a mistake when you did not. But in general, that is not why we thank God - it rather more rests in the belief that God is always with you and watching over you, that even in your suffering there is someone with you. That's why winning or losing a chess game, for example, wouldn't necessarily shake someone's faith - because winning or losing is no indication for you whether God's with you. You no longer need proof that God's with you.

    There are other, bigger things that do shake people's faith, of course. This here is something I do not think Christians handle terribly well. I once read an article of a Christian discussing the idea of God and suffering, and he gave the example of a little girl dying. He was so enraged by this death that he "left" God for at least a year - he decided he would live as though there was no God. Eventually he came back to his faith. But the way he spoke about it, he used words like "my childish tantrum" or something to that effect.

    And I don't understand. Why should we downplay our anger, our pain, our sense of justice, just because of our core belief that God is good? Can the two not co-exist? But Christians are prone to downplaying our own pain in the aftermath of events, as if to somehow justify the reasoning of "God is still good." Because if the source of your pain was as great as it actually is, then how can God be good? And because they cannot compute with the two ideas side by side, they must downplay their pain in order to keep their beliefs intact. It's a kind of self-preservation, I understand, but I think it does our faith, our God, and ourselves, a disservice and it is far from a healthy mindset. Nor helpful, if you were hoping to help someone in the midst of grief.

    @Killer300 - then you should read this book called The Shack. It's about a guy whose daughter was murdered, and years later he receives a letter from God inviting him back to the shack where his daughter first went missing. There he meets Father, Jesus, and Holy Spirit. And the Father is represented by a black woman :D See, I told you there're critical Christians out there exploring things!

    To answer your question of the gender issue with God - the basic answer would be because God is referred to as "Father" and Jesus was obviously a man, and the Father's "Son". Hence the "he" attribution. Jesus also taught us to pray, saying, "Abba Father." So the case for the "he" attribution is strong. However, I'm open for the idea of God being genderless - it could be that He assumed a gender that was the easiest to understand for us, as He often taught in similar ways, always using images and stories the people He was talking to would understand. In the Bible, God is often referred to as "mother", as well as "helper" - esp the Holy Spirit is often the "helper", which you could attribute as being female, because Eve was Adam's "helper". It was one of many things I read where Christians argued that being a helper is not a lesser job, because God Himself was called "the helper".
     
  8. Cogito

    Cogito Former Mod, Retired Supporter Contributor

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    Or God is recorded as the gender the chroniclers attributed to God. Interesting, given the gender associated with fertility, to ascribe the Creator of all things to be male. But the male gender was associated with power. So, is God the Creator, or the All-powerful?

    Assumptions usually reflect more on the assumer than on the subject of assumption.
     
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  9. Lemex

    Lemex That's Lord Lemex to you. Contributor

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    Anthropologically speaking it would make sense for a god, after a period of polytheism, to be male.

    The male ultimately holds power, just as Zeus/Jupiter were both male. In the poetic record of the Romans there is constant reference to 'Deus' which I think means just one god, what about the others? Well, Zeus is the king, so when referring to the one god, you are referring to the highest god. How easily this can be turned from the highest god to the one god that even exists and the rest either die and drop off or fade into non-existence is easily imagined.
     
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  10. ChickenFreak

    ChickenFreak Contributor Contributor

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    I wrote a response to this but never posted it. So I drift in a couple of days behind:

    Not the way I interpret it. To me, luck is just a single-word term for describing the times when the randomness of the universe has an outcome that is good for you, not bad for you. So there was some chance that the engine would catch, and some chance that it wouldn't, and the dice eventually rolled so that it caught.

    Now, that's not to say that there isn't some level at which I believe in luck, but I consider that to be pure superstition on my part. I only take it seriously in the sense of how it may affect my own thinking and performance. For example, I've heard the advice that if a private pilot is heading for the plane and a black cat crosses his path, *AND* he believes that that's bad luck, he should turn around and go home. Because his performance will be compromised.

    There are also times when Action X leads to Bad Outcome Y so many times that I treat Action X as "unlucky", but behind that, I assume that I'm just failing to see some causal relationship. For example, when we go to a particular city on vacation, we always catch really nasty colds. There's probably some logical reason, and we could probably thwart the colds by changing something, but after a particularly dismaying ruined vacation (and walking pneumonia),we've just declared that "City X wants us dead" and we're not so much as allowing a flight connection through that city's airport.

    OK, I'm drifting far away from the question of Christian literature. I think. Though somehow all my babbling feels on topic to me.

    I don't know what the whole package would be, but I would need that questioning. In some other thread, I recently mentioned the West Wing episode "Two Cathedrals", in which President Bartlett has a crisis of faith. One quote, as he's standing in the cathedral after a very good friend's funeral:

    You're a son of a bitch, you know that? She bought her first new car and you hit her with a drunk driver. What, was that supposed to be funny? "You can't conceive, nor can I, the appalling strangeness of the mercy of God," says Graham Greene. I don't know whose ass he was kissin' there, 'cause I think you're just vindictive.

    Later, he "sees" his friend (Dream? Ghost? Daydreaming with a realization of what she would have said? I think that she comes from him. A Christian might think that she comes from God.)

    God doesn't make cars crash and you know it. Stop using me as an excuse.

    She slaps him around a little (verbally) and pulls him back to the kind of problem-solving that he does best --and she does it in his friend's voice, not God's voice. And he finds, I think, a way to do his duty and follow his religion on his own terms. A Christian would see this as being about God. I see it as being about a belief system that I don't believe in, but one that works for him and allows him to do good.

    West Wing isn't a "Christian" series, it just respects its characters' religions. (There's also an episode about the death penalty, where Toby is told firmly by his Rabbi, "Revenge is not Jewish.")
     
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  11. ChickenFreak

    ChickenFreak Contributor Contributor

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    My understanding is that the Bible, pre-translation, has a lot of feminine metaphors that were converted to be masculine. (The one I keep remembering is that supposedly a phrase translated as "the God that fathered you" uses a metaphor that essentially means giving birth, and therefore should be more like "the God that mothered you.")

    I've always wanted to find a book/article/something, written by a very good linguist who has no particular axe to grind, addressing this.
     
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  12. Aled James Taylor

    Aled James Taylor Contributor Contributor

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    @Mckk The questions I asked were not attempts to seek information, that’s for sure. You could consider them as, ‘this is what I think, what do you think?’ One question I asked was: ‘Should you base your Christian faith on the teachings of Jesus?’ To me, there is an obvious, natural answer to this. That answer is not ‘Christians are stupid/irrational/ignorant’, but simply, ‘Yes’. This then raises questions about what ‘Christian basics’ should be, and what the church has been teaching all these years. If you think I've miss-represented the issues then feel free to challenge me on that. If you can’t fault the question but choose not to believe your own answer to it, then perhaps you have an problem.

    The issue of suffering, like so many others, is a difficult one for Christians. If you ask any preacher: “Will the Christian faith make me immune from suffering?” he will answer: “No, you’re just as likely to suffer accidents, injury and illness as anyone else.” But somehow, on an emotional level, people seem to assume their faith does make them immune, so when a time of suffering comes they ask themselves, “Do I not believe strongly enough? Is my faith inferior in some way?” When a preacher says things like: “We have a all powerful God who cared for His flock,” this really doesn't help. I’m sure such statements are not intended to mislead, but they often do.

    @Shadowfax There is a saying: ‘The better you prepare, the luckier you’ll be’. I’m sure the amount of luck you experience in a chess match depends greatly on how well you can play. Luck is a weighted dice.

    If you thank someone for something, this does imply that that person has actively done something for you. If that person hasn't actually done anything for you, there is nothing to thank them for. If you’re running for a bus and find an extra turn of speed and just manage to catch the bus, you might thank God. Maybe God helped you, maybe He didn't, but you might thank Him anyway, assuming that He did actually intervene and help you. There is no real issue here. But if you’re running a race, which by nature must be conducted in a fair manner as a test of the competitor’s athletic ability, an external influence favoring one competitor over another would raise the ethical concern of cheating and in turn raise the question: ‘Do you actually believe God would do this?’ If you believe in a God who would not take part in cheating, but thank Him for sporting success, this is contradictory.

    Returning to the theme. However you look at it, the prospect of writing a story that includes a Christian theme, is a mine-field of difficult and controversial issues. You could gloss-over the difficulties and pretend that all is well. You could write a story about someone entering a chess tournament, thanking God for each piece of good luck and giving the credit for his eventual success to God. Just keep your fingers crossed that no one notices the fundamental problem.
     
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  13. Mckk

    Mckk Member Supporter Contributor

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    That's very interesting! However, "fathered" is usually understood as you being their offspring, whereas "mothered" is usually understood as being nurtured. So I wonder if the choice of the masculine is for comprehension - based on our patrirchal society - rather than any biases or intention to deliberately make God masculine?

    Biblical Hebrew linguists likely exist - maybe you should contact a scholar from a university? They might be able to point you to some good sources :)
     
  14. Mckk

    Mckk Member Supporter Contributor

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    @Aled James Taylor - your question of "Should Christian teachings be based on the words of Jesus" was never the question that offended me. If you'll remember, I even said outright I find that question interesting and very good. The rhetorical questions I had a problem with wasn't that one. But anyway, now that I understand you better and that you did not mean to imply anything offensive, I think we should drop the subject of whether either of us has a "problem" with our beliefs. Calling it "problem" will only lead to one of us getting wound up/insulted/unhappy. (or maybe it's just me, in which case, please forgive me and consider it a weakness of mine :) )

    So, to finally answer your question of basing Christian teachings on the teachings of Jesus - of course we should, and that is what we do already. The key word is "base" - and certain Christian "basics" are "based" on the teachings of Jesus as well as the rest of the Torah etc. In the end, we must interpret the text and our teachings are inevitably our interpretation of Jesus's words. This is where I believe sometimes we could be teaching things Jesus never actually taught, and other times teachings things that are slightly off but not entirely off, and still other times it will be spot on. The problem is in knowing when you're spot on and when there's room for improvement of your own interpretation. The added problem is of course that every individual regards their own interpretation as correct, no matter whether it is.

    This is the thing I am struggling with most - how do I know I have understood it correctly, with my limited human knowledge and limited human mind, with all my cultural, political, emotional, and personal prejudices? Even churches and the wisest pastor surely suffer from the same condition, so who can I rely on? I have not found my answer to this question as yet.

    In any case, there're certainly many teachings that the church teaches - or rather, youth groups and Bible study groups and well-meaning Christians teach. One example would be, "God has the right person chosen for you to marry." I can't think of others off the top of my head, but there are many, many. Actually I have one: "If you loved this person, truly loved them, you wouldn't date them because they're not a Christian, and by dating them you'd hinder their salvation."

    Believe it or not, I used to believe in that. Even broke up with a guy based on this. I no longer understand what on earth made me think that even made any scrap of sense. I still think it's better to have relationships between two like-minded individuals, which usually means they're probably of the same religion - but hindering their salvation? Like, what?

    Anyway these things are generally accepted to be "of the Bible" when actually it appears nowhere in the entire Bible, let alone from the mouth of Jesus. The whole thing is based on the teaching of being unequally yoked, which was definitely one of Paul's teachings, and I admit I don't remember if Jesus taught the same thing. However, there are many interpretations one could glean from that passage. One could also argue from the Old Testament that in general a Christian should stay with a fellow Christian in a romantic relationship, but once again the reasoning behind the modern teaching of "you would otherwise hinder their salvation" is nowhere to be found.

    Btw what an interesting thought behind the sporting event and cheating. I never saw it that way. Thank you for the interesting insight!

    @ChickenFreak - that West Wing episode sounds fabulous. I really like it. I love the two perspectives, and I love the anger - that it's realistic, and that pain is not downplayed. Btw out of interest, what city was it that wants you dead? :D that sounds really funny!
     
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  15. Aled James Taylor

    Aled James Taylor Contributor Contributor

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    @Mckk I believe there is only one true interpretation of any Bible text, (or any text for that matter). That is, the idea that was in the mind of its author at the time he wrote. Unfortunately, we can only speculate as to what that was, but some speculations are more probable than others. We could ask, 'what does this mean to me?' or 'what did this mean to people back then?' Only the second question would give the correct answer but to answer it we'd have to consider the historical and cultural setting and consider matters impartially. Even then we'd only have a best guess. There is a great deal of evidence in the ancient manuscripts of editing, so determining the original text of each book is a matter of debate. Looking at it this way, it's anything but, 'read and believe'.

    It's not my intention to imply that you have any particular 'problem'. Sometimes I come across something and slap my hand to my forehead and think, 'why didn't I see this before? Oh, this doesn't agree with what I believe, I have a problem here, I'm going to have to re-think this.'

    My point about the Christian basics is this, Imagine yourself living in the first Century and actually listening to Jesus preaching, then you think, 'I'm going to put into practice what I've heard.' This would be Christianity as you understood it and how Jesus understood it. So why isn't it like this today? This is not the shape of Christianity as we have it today as the conflicts the church has faced have left their marks.
     
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  16. Selbbin

    Selbbin The Moderating Cat Staff Contributor Contest Winner 2023

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    Excuse me, but, 'dafuq? Any artform, including literature, is open to personal interpretation by the user. Often it is created with the intention for individuals to find their own meaning. There is no 'correct' answer.
     
    Last edited: Oct 22, 2014
  17. ChickenFreak

    ChickenFreak Contributor Contributor

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    I can't agree here. I disagree in at least two different respects: What the author meant to say isn't necessarily what the reader is going to hear, and what the author consciously said may not even be what the author, in the end, actually said.

    Re the second: For example, I realized a few months after writing my short "Bitter Oranges" that the main character, the cat, was my mother. That story is the most sympathetic work that I've ever written about my mother, and probably the most sympathetic that I ever will write. That's because the story separated a subset of my mother's faults from my mother herself, and therefore separated them from my anger at my mother. I didn't intend to communicate sympathy for my mother, but in the end, that's what the part of my mind that conjured up the story is communicating to me when I read it now.

    Re the first: There are plenty of stories that the author intends to communicate meaning or moral X, that actually communicate meaning or moral Y. A story, by providing a detailed and compelling description of a specific idea, can unintentionally cause the reader to gain a greater understanding of that idea, and as a result be repelled by it.
     
  18. Killer300

    Killer300 Senior Member

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    @Killer300 - then you should read this book called The Shack. It's about a guy whose daughter was murdered, and years later he receives a letter from God inviting him back to the shack where his daughter first went missing. There he meets Father, Jesus, and Holy Spirit. And the Father is represented by a black woman :D See, I told you there're critical Christians out there exploring things![/QUOTE]

    Ah, interesting, and certainly a way to play with things!

    Reminds me of how I actually really like how many times a Christmas Carol has had interesting spins on it(even if the original can have... awkward bits in hindsight, judging by far earlier posts.)

    Wouldn't this also perhaps be a case of human language being a rather limited tool to define a being that is... omnipotent, omnipresent, and by extension in a way, endless?

    I only bring this up because I've, sort of, heard this as an argument elsewhere(it was in something completely different, academic debate about the logicalness of any omnipotent God, not any specific one.) It was interesting, especially as an issue I'd think the Bible is that it has been translated and re-translated so many times(with who knows how many things happening in between in regards to say, the politics of a particular era interfering), that... well, is the original message even intact? Okay, that's too strong, but still, how language impacts all this adds thoughts to all of this.

    That, and again, I guess I just can't see an omnipotent being, who, from what I understand, is supposed to be beyond human in various ways, such as again having unlimited knowledge, having gender or sex as we think of it. True, it does take the form of Jesus, but, to take an example of another God(for the sake of comparison between omnipotent deities in religions), Brahma(also, apologies in advance to Hindus if I butcher the names of someone), has many forms, including female Goddesses. I don't think that makes Brahma proper female or male, if you will. Brahma... itself(English language really limits me here), doesn't have a gender or sex, from what I understand, because that's binding it to rather human concepts, when Brahma is beyond such things. Shouldn't the Christian God be as well? (Note, being beyond doesn't preclude a deity from being benevolent or anything, that's a whole other matter.)

    I bring all that up because, again, I think this is something to explore and ask questions about in a Christian story.
     
  19. Aled James Taylor

    Aled James Taylor Contributor Contributor

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    Different people can like a piece of literature for different reasons, some of these may have been unintended by the author, there is no harm in this. But it would be an entirely different matter to consider a text book and draw from it unintended ideas. In a text book, intent is anything but irrelevant, and there is a correct answer. If you’re not sure about something and you have the opportunity to ask the author and he says, “I meant this,” then that is the correct answer. The books of the Bible are more like a text books, where the authors are trying to tell you how to live your life.

    The ideas described in a text book have the authority of the author. If you interpret a text in a way that produces ideas unlike those of the author, what authority do those alternative ideas have? No more authority than any idea you may have independently. Even if your idea is correct, you could not legitimately attribute it to the author because it would be your idea, not his.

    Sometimes an author writes something that most readers draw an unintended idea from. This would be an error on the part of the author. He could come back and say, “I know that’s what I wrote, but that’s not what I meant.” An unintended idea, essentially produced at random, is not something we should live our lives by.

    You may write a story about a cat that is actually about your mother, but if I were to take any story about a cat, written by any author and say, “This story is about the authors mother,” would that be a safe assumption to make? If you consider any Bible text to mean something other than its most likely meaning, then the flood gates are opened and practically any idea can be thought of as ‘Biblical’.

    An author can write about a subject with the intention of encouraging the reader to be attracted to, or be repelled by the subject matter. An author could, for example, write a story about racism, to show how bad it is, but if the work ends up on the recommended reading list of white supremacists, something would have gone wrong.

    The process of interpreting the Bible is that of making the best guesses we can and the safest assumptions. I don’t think any system is perfect as there will always be exceptions but I can’t believe that taking a text out-of-context would give a more reliable result than considering it in-context.
     
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  20. Shadowfax

    Shadowfax Contributor Contributor

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    I first heard of something like this being attributed to Rod Laver (4-times Wimbledon winner) responding to the charge of being "lucky" by saying "The harder I work, the luckier I get."

    My example of a chess match doesn't deny that SUCCESS at chess depends on a combination of talent and preparation, but that I quoted Bill Hartston saying that "there is no such thing as bad luck in chess, but any amount of good luck". The point being that for me to lose by making a mistake is my fault, for me to win by my opponent making a mistake is my good luck. And if I make no mistakes, ultimately my opponent will, and I will be lucky. The point, however, is more about major blunders than about subtle positional oversights, whose effects won't become apparent for many moves.

    In my original post on this point, I said that luck is random chance - 1 person surviving a catastrophe is lucky, the 1000 victims were not.

    In the chess example, it's random chance if I get lucky and my opponent blunders, or he gets lucky and I blunder.

    In the catastrophe example, it's random chance if I survive or not.

    In neither example does God deserve thanks...or brickbats!
     
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  21. Catrin Lewis

    Catrin Lewis Contributor Contributor Contest Winner 2023 Community Volunteer

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    Haven't read through all the comments here, but to tell you how I feel on the subject, here's an excerpt from my Work in Progress. It describes a first (and last) date.

    Not saying this is great literature, either, but I think you get my point. When I was actively pastoring, whenever we needed that sort of script I wrote it myself.
     
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  22. Marivian

    Marivian New Member

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    Ever read "Shadowmancer"? I've never been clubbed over the head so hard in my life.

    Now the problem with Christian books? You know I'm not entirely sure. I think one problem is that many that I've seen minus the Left Behind series refuse to actually acknowledge God. They club you over the head with some other deity that's supposed to be God but is named something else. That's the first problem. The second is that people are clubbed to begin with. The thing about the Gospel is that it tells us we're wrong. No one wants to hear that. Jesus died because we're wrong. We always were and always will be. Nobody wants to hear that they're wrong. No one wants to look in the mirror. So when you're clubbed you don't want to hear it.

    Not only that some beat people senseless with Bible verses and no one wants that either.

    My guess? I think people need to be a little easier with the Bible. Ever listen to Joel Osteen preach? Many come for his throat because he doesn't exactly throw verses out in every sentence but he slides some in once in awhile if you're paying attention. Sure Joel has a Feel Good message but look at the World. I'm glad for preachers like him. And when he throws out a verse it's quick, to the point, shows what he's saying and that's that. He doesn't club people. He just slides it in calm and cool. You can take it or leave it. That's the way people need to be with the Bible and in regards to Christian literature IMHO.
     
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  23. Catrin Lewis

    Catrin Lewis Contributor Contributor Contest Winner 2023 Community Volunteer

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    Don't get me started on Joel Osteen. He's a goatherder.
     
  24. Killer300

    Killer300 Senior Member

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    Another thought I recently had was actually how free will, as an issue, impacts all of this. Why would God give humans free will if there also exist so many things in the universe God created to take it away?

    I bring it up, because free will is a pretty central theme of Christianity, yet we constantly have discovered means it can be taken away, ranging from the impacts of genetics to say, the impacts of abuse on a person later. And this isn't even considering things such as not getting to pick where you are born, or who your parents are.

    What if that was a central theme? I also ask about it because its actually an issue I've encountered elsewhere(for example, how would one deal with sin if one has no ability to choose in the matter?) In that case, its a wide range of creatures that can take it away.
     
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  25. Selbbin

    Selbbin The Moderating Cat Staff Contributor Contest Winner 2023

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    I think I've introduced faith in my book because a) the main character is lonely, and often lonely people take comfort in the love of God, and b) it gives her a moral compass, that gives reason to her odd behavior and OCD. She accepts her misery, poverty, and trials as tests of faith and morality, and instead of despairing in her poverty, she uses faith to not only embrace it, but enforce it.
     

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