Yes! Till We Have Faces is awesome.

My favourite Lewis happens to be The Screwtape Letters.

The Great Divorce was very good, very thought-provoking. Anybody read The Pilgrim’s Regress?

Am I the only one who read (and enjoyed) The Abolition of Man?

I read part of the first book, but then I got….distracted….

Some more Lewis quotes:

“The problem with trying to make yourself stupider than you really are is that you most often succeed.”

“A man who is eating or lying with his wife or preparing to go to sleep in humility, thankfulness and temperance, is, by Christian standards, in an infinitely higher state than one who is listening to Bach or reading Plato in a state of pride.”

“An explanation of cause is not a justification of reason.”

“Friendship is unnecessary, like philosophy, like art… It has no survival value; rather it is one of those things that give value to survival.”

Am I the only one who read (and enjoyed) The Abolition of Man?

One of the few of his works I had to read multiple times before I “got”. Reading the last of the space trilogy (that Hideous Strength) along with or before reading tAoM helps a lot.

The Great Divorce was very good, very thought-provoking. Anybody read The Pilgrim’s Regress?

I have but I’ve been wanting to reread it since I’ve read his autobiography and his biography. Plus, I think it improves a lot the older you get and the more life experience you have.

Actually… it’s a shorter list of which Lewis books I HAVEN’T read. (he takes up 2 shelves of mine)
Now you want to go hardcore, start reading George MacDonald. Lewis’ mentor and the grandfather of fantasy. Gotten through 2 books so far. Downloaded several more but haven’t gotten around to them yet.

And here you people go: Daily Lewis quotes.

I haven't read Perelandra actually, I've been meaning too, but I just haven't got around to it.

And in other news, anyone seen The Book of Eli?

Oh, I only saw it once in theater :D

So do I.

That… changes my opinion of it somewhat…

Some here might appreciate this VERY indepth analysis of the Narnia movies. (if you want a lighter read, just visit my blog)

I see what you mean. I could not STAND Peter in Prince Caspian.
About missing Narnia, it seems to be that in the books, they missed Narnia because they loved it, sort of the way you miss your home when you’re away. But in the movies, it just seemed like they missed being powerful and bossing people around.

As a side note, do you think it’s still possible to put Christian values into a story without being labeled ‘preachy’?

Obviously. How many people call HP preachy?

Without giving any specifics, there’s more later on.

Danielle, I’m glad to hear that about Rivers, because I just found a volume of Leota’s Garden and another story at the library book sale and I bought if for my mom for Christmas. I was pretty sure that she’d been mentioned positively on this thread, but I couldn’t remember when I bought it. Now I am relieved :)

And I’d definitely say the difference is in the spoken vs. demonstration. As you say, most current fiction labeled “Christian” seems to be specifically evangelical. As though a story built on the foundations of faith is less Christian, if it doesn’t lay out the theme explicitly. Has Flannery O’Connor been brought up yet (forgive me, I can’t remember). I remember being surprised (you know, before I knew how to read literature) when I heard she was Catholic.

Edit: I’ve finished the article, and I’m so glad that I stopped watching the Narnia films after the first one, and it sounds like Prince Caspian was pretty awful. I just didn’t have any interest. And then I saw the trailer for the newest one too often, and that part where Lucy opens the magic book or whatever it’s supposed to be, and exclaims “I’m so beautiful!” when she sees her future self. It drives me mad. Gee, lucky you.

I mostly have given up on Christian fiction because it’s all mushy historical romance.

As have I. sigh It’s all Janette Oake and Karen Kingsbury and all of their wannbes. Even Christian thrillers are getting preachier. Ted Dekker was one of my favorite authors for a long time, and I still like some of his older works. Blink, Three and the Circle Trilogy are all excellent. But after writing Saint, I think he realized how much easier it is to simply have the characters say what the message is than to demonstrate it, and how much simpler it can be to make your villains Evil Ultra-Liberal Pro-Muslim Anti-Christian Cardboard Cutouts than to actually make them three-dimensional people. Which is why I stopped reading Sinner two-thirds of the way through.

Oh well. I still have his earlier books to enjoy. And Francine Rivers is still producing quality work, and I have her latest to read over the break.

I think a book being “Christian fiction” and just having Christian themes or values are different. All I can think of is Narnia is Christian fiction, even though I didn’t know until I read it somewhere that it was, and Harry Potter had Christian themes and values.

Most Christian fiction is terrible, and I try to avoid it, but I like books with Christian themes. I did like the first two Narnia books. The third one bored me so much that I lost interest in it. I also liked THR3E, but I didn’t know that was Christian either when I read it. I have read, and attempted to read, some horrible Christian books my grandma gave me that just pound the reader over the head with “this is a Christian book.”

I was in a Christian bookstore the other day and it had a decent selection of Bibles, commentaries, the usual nonfiction stuff, and even some decent-looking kids’ fiction (Chronicles of Narnia and so on), but in fiction for adults, it was pretty much just Amish, Lori Wick, and historical romance, none of which interests me in the slightest. Not even a single Francine Rivers, Terri Blackstock, Ted Dekker, or Frank Peretti book! There were a couple of Dee Henderson books, but only ones I’d read before, so that was no use.

Seriously, there’s decent Christian fiction out there, it’s just impossible to find in many stores…

Personally? Well… that starts getting complex doesn’t it? Myself, I’m of the thinking that God is one of Truth, so anything that is true is from him, therefore worth reading by Christians. It can be as simple and basic as a math textbook, to deeper more complex metaphysical truths.

If I had an internet, I would give it to you.

I think a lot of Christians (metaphorically speaking) barricade themselves behind reading material. They won’t read anything by a non-Christian author because Christian authors are the only ones (according to them) who can write something they can agree with. Which is untrue on both fronts; to prove it, I submit to you The Shack and the Harry Potter books.

I don’t want to offend anyone, or get too narrowly theological, so I’ll just point out some of the broader mistakes I noticed in The Shack. The book is about a man who loses his daughter to a kidnapper who eventually kills her in a secluded shack. Years later, he receives a note from God, telling him to meet her (in The Shack, God is represented as a black woman) in the same shack where his daughter died.

One of the biggest flaws in the book (aside from the atrocious writing) is the heresy of universal salvation. In the Gospels, Jesus says “I am the way, the truth, and the life, no one comes to the Father except through me.” Short, sweet, and to the point. In The Shack, however, one character says that Jesus saved all humanity at the Cross. By his death, the author says, all men were brought to him. According to the Bible, however, a person is only saved when they repent of their sins and accept Christ as their Savior. It has to be a conscious choice.

Some Christians loved The Shack. Seeming to ignore the fallacies in it, they sent it straight to Number One on the NYT Bestsellers list for quite a few weeks. The only reason I can see is that it was marketed as a Christian book, so Christian readers assumed it was okay.

The Harry Potter books, on the other hand, were the subject of a lot of controversy from Christian groups. I remember, as a kid, hearing commentators on the radio talk about the supposed witchcraft in the books, reading editorials about kids who had gotten involved in Wicca because of the books, and listening to my parents talk about how horrible they were.

In the books, Harry learns the value of friendship and helping others. Harry befriends the friendless, stands up for the innocent, and performs rescue after heroic rescue, all while fighting Voldemort’s growing influence over the wizarding world. The last book of the series clearly sets it up as a Christian allegory, with Harry as the literary Christ figure and Voldemort as the representation of Satan.

As I’ve said before, Christians didn’t like Harry Potter. They still don’t. And I think that’s a shame. There is a lot of truth in the Harry Potter books—while The Shack has very little. However, it’s The Shack that is praised by Christians, simply because of how it was marketed and the package the fallacies are wrapped in.

You have got to be joking… right, SWQ? Right? You’re joking, right?!

That’s just ridiculous! I have no idea how it could be considered “satanic” anyway, even if it wasn’t written by a Christian who wrote about Christian-y things and discussed Christianity with his Christian friend and Christian writer C. S. Lewis. Because it has magic? A basic reading of the book would imply heavily that no, there really isn’t magic in the sense of spells and magic rituals and whatnot. Because there’s wizards? They aren’t wizards, they’re angels, sort of. At the very least they’re agents of God. Because there’s godlike beings not named Elohim, Jehovah, or Adonai? The Valar are pretty much angels and Eru is incredibly obviously God. If you somehow miss all this, you should still not consider it Satanist because the two most Satan-like characters (Morgoth and Sauron) are—get this—EVIL and NEEDING TO BE DESTROYED. And I’d also like to point out that LotR, unlike many Christian books, does not trivialize the power of Satan—getting rid of Morgoth takes the intervention of all of the Valar, not just some strong-minded humans.

HOW CAN ANYONE MISS THE FACT THAT WHILE NOT A CHRISTIAN ALLEGORY, LOTR HAS VERY CLEAR AND OBVIOUS CHRISTIAN INFLUENCES AND THEMES?!

Swenson, because I know you won’t believe me, here is one of the more SANE things I’ve read on Lewis is not a christian.

And by that I mean, I read more of it than most others before either laughing or crying too much to continue.

I laughed when I saw the headline “the future is transgender not straight” and wanted to ask “So how you getting around natural selection, then?”

You just love setting me off, don’t you, Nate? :D

Must… resist… obvious… joke…

Actually, girl, you wouldn’t believe some of the things I could link you to. And I don’t mean the obvious traumatizing stuff…

Becoming a Christian does not make you instantly inerrant. You’re going to get things wrong sometimes, whether you’re C. S. Lewis himself or just swenson

My favorite line of his, for all time, comes from the Great Divorce. Two friends of different denominations meant and one of them exclaims (approx, I don’t have it in front of me) “Don’t you get it? We were all wrong!”

HOW CAN ANYONE MISS THE FACT THAT WHILE NOT A CHRISTIAN ALLEGORY, LOTR HAS VERY CLEAR AND OBVIOUS CHRISTIAN INFLUENCES AND THEMES?!

...Well, I didn’t know that Narnia was Christian, even after reading The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, The Magician’s Nephew, and The Horse and His Boy. I either found out through TV, the internet, or someone told me. I didn’t know LotR was Christian either (I still haven’t read it). I don’t remember when I found out. I might have found out from this site.

This may just be because all the “Christian” fiction I have read (with few exceptions) was the beat-you-over-the-head kind. Maybe I just didn’t know that Christian books could not scream “this is a Christian book!!!” every other sentence. That’s why I didn’t like them. I need to read the rest of Narnia and LotR.

The author of the blog said he/she liked Earth: Final Conflict because the aliens were androgynous. How, pray tell, do they procreate? (Don’t answer that; I really don’t want to know.)

Actually…. to E:FC’s credit (well, before it got stupid – I used to really like it), that was actually a MAJOR plot point and part of the aliens’ interest in humanity (in that, they were hoping we could help them fix that problem). The answer does get complicated, this show went on for several seasons after all.

So….. yeah, E:FC actually disproves the author’s own thesis itself.

I almost peed myself when they called Tumnus the “Greek sex god in disguise.” He’s not bad looking, for a faun, but he’s not that sexy….

Actually it just proves the Greeks had very low standards.

This may just be because all the “Christian” fiction I have read (with few exceptions) was the beat-you-over-the-head kind. Maybe I just didn’t know that Christian books could not scream “this is a Christian book!!!” every other sentence. That’s why I didn’t like them. I need to read the rest of Narnia and LotR.

I have “finding God in LotR” and highly recommend it. I think the biggest problem with people claiming LotR or Narnia are “pagan” is that nowadays, nobody really knows what paganism was. Once you start doing more research and realize just how fundamentally different worldviews and such are (though in a lot of ways, LotR is still pre-christian paganism), the Christian differences and themes become so obvious you wonder how you missed it.

But… there are entire essays and books devoted to this so I’ll make myself stop.

[deep breath]

Don’t they have one of those for HP too? Or it may have just been a series of internet articles.

There is a “finding god in harry potter” book as well, but it’s done by a different author from the LotR one. HOWEVER, said author has also put up a LOT of information (maybe as much or more as in the book) on his own website. Do a search for “hogwarts professor”. He also did a bunch of stuff on Twilight…

I think too much of the guy to go further. There’s a difference in style between the LotR and HP editions of these books and I prefer the LotR author style myself, but the HP author is a good scholar nonetheless.

...must…stop…rambling…

Morally, I’d say the biggest problem with HP was…well, yeah….the morality of the protagonists is a good way to put it. Harry gets away with skirting around and breaking a few rules, while Draco is punished much more harshly for doing the same thing. The only reason given is that Harry is the hero and has good reasons for breaking the rules he breaks, while Draco is Harry’s rival and obviously up to no good.

That, and the inclusion of a class called Divination. But I think the fifth-year Divination teacher (forget his name, but he was a centaur) taught it best: You can try to see the future, and you can become especially good at reading the signs. But sometimes, the future just isn’t yours to know. Sometimes, you can’t predict the future because the future is always changing. I think that was Rowling’s point in including that class—to show that we humans can’t know everything.

So… does this book fall under here or what? I can’t decide if it’s horrid or awesome.

Deborah, you’re going to temp me to pick up a copy just to see if it’s spork worthy…

There is almost nothing original about vampires anymore. They have been done to death. Or should I say undeath?

At least it’s not a twilight-esque story about a female sparkly vampire falling in love with Jesus and…

I suddenly feel very sick. Oh God, please forgive me.

@Nate – O.O

That is all.

I will not go to TVTropes, Nate. Three months clean and I’m NOT giving up now!

Yes my friends… fear me! For I have learned to wield TV Tropes AS A WEAPON!

I – of course – have taken the precaution to immunize myself first.

Bond’s lucky I don’t want to take over the world.

...Yet.

(and you’ve seen signs of just how twisted my mind can go)

@Danielle.

There’s a trope for that.

Wait – no, I think it’s this one.

Deborah, truly you are…

Does anyone know if there will be a Sequel to the Book of Eli?

Gasp! I always envisioned myself more like the Joker…

Hurm. Well, I guess TVTropes IS kind of like the Joker’s laughing gas—you’re really happy, right up until it kills you.

Well, you’re off to Arkham, then! I SHALL NOT GIGGLE TO DEATH!!!!

I never could read the later books with as much enjoyment (and didn’t read the last few at all), but I think the early books were better in that, being simple black/white stories instead of trying to be bigger & deeper than the world she tried to graft onto them. But obviously, I’m not all that educated on the subject, since I’ve mostly read about them after hearing what happened.

Hey, HP is one of those things I don’t fault someone for not enjoying it.

However, as for “paying lip service to honourable traits, and then doing the exact opposite of what they should be” I’ve heard that HP follows in a certain British style of fiction. I haven’t looked up much on it, but supposedly that explains a lot about why some “minor crimes” are overlooked in the books.

@ SweetRunningBreeze: If a normal teacher pulled the kind of crap Snape does, they’d be out of a job fast- the way that he treats poor harmless Neville alone is pretty horrible. Even if a student is as hopeless as Neville, that doesn’t give you the right to verbally abuse him. I love his character but that doesn’t change the fact that he’s a jerk and not at all suited to be a teacher.

Maybe British teachers get away with more than American teachers (read Lewis’ Surprised by Joy – he had a teacher that was even crueler than Snape).

But then I’ve long said we yanks could stand to toughen up in our schools a bit. Then again, I did go to school in the south where gutting and cleaning a fish was an elective. (I, of course, took Taxidermy 201 instead for my animal credit)

If a normal teacher pulled the kind of crap Snape does, they’d be out of a job fast- the way that he treats poor harmless Neville alone is pretty horrible. Even if a student is as hopeless as Neville, that doesn’t give you the right to verbally abuse him. I love his character but that doesn’t change the fact that he’s a jerk and not at all suited to be a teacher.

Maybe it’s just the school I went to, but I didn’t think Snape’s behavior was that unusual. Harsher than I was used to in high school, but my high school was college prep and probably a lot tougher (discipline-wise) than most high schools. Like, my 11th grade AP History teacher told us straight out that he believed girls were inferior to boys, so he graded boys tougher than he did girls. When my 10th grade history teacher found out I was a Christian (he was an atheist) he began seeking out ways to fail me. One time, I was in a school play and was gone for his class for several days, so he changed the requirements for an assignment while I was gone. Since our group didn’t know the requirements had changed and the assignment was due the day we got back, we got a D. When I gave a presentation, he didn’t give me a time warning (like he did the other students) so I went over by two or three minutes and got a C. (Other students went over the time limit and, to my knowledge, weren’t penalized.)

This year, my sister (who’s in middle school) has a teacher who responds to students’ requests with open disdain, and openly favors some (read: the girls who are mean to my sister) and dislikes others (read: my sister). The principal doesn’t do anything about it because she has tenure.

So maybe it just depends on the school you go to.

^^ That place sounds horrible. Those people shouldn’t be teachers at any kind if school.

The only teacher I really regret having was my 10th grade history teacher. He was a jerk. But my 11th grade history teacher was really good. He gave us a fair look at American history, and I learned more in his class than I’ve learned in almost any other. Of course, he was also crazy. After the AP exam, we had about a month of nothing—since all of our AP stuff was done, there was no more material to cover—and instead of letting us talk or watch movies or whatever, he made us do study hour. Reading or homework, no talking, no iPods, nothing but study. I’m not trying to excuse his behavior; I’m just saying I learned a lot.

But Snape also hits them in heads with books, doesn’t he? I think in the movie he did once.

Ummm….I haven’t read the books in a while, but I don’t remember that happening in the books. With Snape, it was more just psychological torture—belittling, humiliating, making an example of what he considered “problem” students…that sort of thing. Which is kind of what my AP history teacher did. We often joked (sort of) that if one of us transferred out of his class into regular US history, he’d show up on our front porch with a chainsaw, demanding why we transferred. I can’t decide if it was because he wanted us to learn, or because he resented the fact we could escape his class at any moment.

Just a note to say that any time anybody wants to get back on topic, feel free.

Not that I’m trying to say you need to stop this conversation. It’s interesting.

There’s a difference between equal-opportunity strictness and discrimination against certain students. I’ve also encountered teachers who specifically don’t like a few students and demonstrate it quite obviously. It really makes me feel uncomfortable and lowers my respect for the teacher a lot. I’ve also come across other teachers who are rather sarcastic and harsh in their grading and policies, etc. but they apply this to everyone and don’t make exceptions or favors- which is perfectly fair and acceptable.

I agree. That’s why I forgave my AP US History teacher his sarcasm and general instability—because he was rude to everyone, not just me. It’s also why I still dislike my 10th grade History teacher—because he singled me out for no reason other than my faith.

As far as Snape goes, I think he crosses the line at several points. If I were in his class, I might complain to the Headmaster about his behavior, because there’s a fine line between being a good teacher with a somewhat fractured psyche and a few psychotic tendencies and openly, harshly discriminating on the basis of faith, gender, race, etc.

Or, in Snape’s case, Hogwarts Houses.

I'm doing a Warhammer 40K redux. In which there's hope and sometimes peace and man worships the I Am.

Yes, I know. Don't worry about how Christian your writing is, just try to be a good Christian and that will reflect. But the thing is the redux is already pretty overtly Christian (In an allegorical way, but you get my meaning). Should I just go all out say that Man worships God, Jesus and the Holy Ghost or stick with the allegorical version?

Do you mean, what works with the best with the setting?

Because both would work fine.

Hmmm, I hadn't thought of that.

Thanks! :D

I always personally thought you had to have religion in there to fill some sort of ‘see, I am Christian’ quota.

I never thought that until I this thread was started. Then I started to worry that I wasn’t being Christian enough or something because I didn’t put that stuff in my writing. I tried adding some, but it was unnatural, so I took it out. I have now decided that I don’t have to add it if it doesn’t fit the story. Most of the books I like aren’t “Christian books.” Some have Christian themes; some don’t. I don’t think being Christian means I can only write certain types of stories. I’ll probably have at least one book/story that will have all the Christian stuff in it, and it will work, but I don’t think everything I write has to be like that.

Are we perpetuating the myth that the world is just fine without a God?

In my opinion, no. Just because there is no religion in a story, doesn’t mean the writer is saying there is no God, and that’s just fine, it just means they don’t happen to have religion at the moment. They should have believed in the past, but something went wrong, or they could believe again in the future.

My WIP doesn’t have religion either (I tried to add a little, but it was going to be difficult to explain how they had it; I might add some in revisions). The people are treated like animals for the most part, so I could see it not really developing among them.