Pastor’s E-Pistle

It’s Just Fantasy - Isn’t It

Some Christians would respond to all of this by saying, “This is just fantasy. It’s not real, so what’s the big deal?“ True, His Dark Materials is a fantasy trilogy; however, it is fantasy in which at least some of the characters are real. Pullman leaves no doubt who his villain is when he calls him “The Authority, God, the Creator, the Lord, Yahweh, El, Adonai, the King, the Father, the Almighty.” These are all the names for our God and Father. Some of you have children of your own. Let’s imagine for a moment that someday someone were to write a fantasy novel and decided to use you as one of the main characters. Imagine that throughout the book you were described as an evil, lying, manipulative, senile, foolish tyrant. Now imagine that the book is written by someone who has publicly declared his disdain for you. Would you want your children to read such a book? Would you want them to enjoy it?

There is a concept in reading fiction and fantasy literature that Samuel Taylor Coleridge called “the willing suspension of disbelief” and J.R.R. Tolkien called “secondary belief.” It means that while a person is reading this type of literature, they must willingly lay aside their natural disbelief at its fantastic elements and accept its premises as true. While this is a valid aesthetic theory, I would suggest that for the Christian there is no such thing as the willing suspension of loyalty to God. Even when reading a book or watching a movie, we must never lay aside our love for God and our indignation at attacks against His character. Those of us who are bought with the precious blood of Christ cannot simply put Him out of our minds and pretend that He does not exist for as long as we want to entertain ourselves. If we do, even for a short time, we are in danger of becoming like the fool who has said in his heart, “There is no God” (Psalm 53:1).

This entry was posted on Sunday, November 25th, 2007 at 4:05 am and is filed under Culture. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.