(no subject)
I have been wondering about the best way to portray God in a story.
Many times he is necessarily vague. In the New Testament we see him as through Christ--almost necessary for us human beings to see and comprehend? Literature is full of the "imagination's search for God"... I thought last night, at a gathering at a friend's house, they were telling us about Cthulu, describing him as this cosmic being of unspeakable terror from which no one could ultimately escape. I thought, wow, what a great example of the imagination's search for God... for to atheists and those who hate God... God is exactly thus. Maybe he even appears as a terrifying bat-winged squid-headed monstrosity (not literally, obviously, but the imagination might search him this way if this is the quality of the soul's relationship to him).
How we portray God, then, has everything to do with the relationship of the soul who is seeing him. Since in my fantasy world (so far) there is not an Incarnation, all of the approach of the races of the world to God are mainly imaginative and revelatory--the soul, or mind/personality complex (psyche) interpreting and imaging the experiences of the spirit (pneuma) with its Creator.
In literature then we have several choices, and the most popular one in spiritual fiction seems to be to take the camera off of God or of visions or experiences of him, and onto characters whose choices and actions we can see and touch, observing their response to God's work in their spirit. Tolkien does this (even without religion in his fiction he presumes on the truths of religion worked directly into the motives and choices of the characters), Bryan does this too, and hey, God did it HIMSELF with Jesus Christ. Don't trust those pictures and feelings in your mind, persay, but ground them in what is made possible in human life. He did it himself, so of course we are to imitate. Perhaps this is the best way, then, to approach depicting God in fiction. This too is why reading about and studying the lives of the saints can be so profound and useful in one's spiritual life.
Let us write fiction about saints, then.... and characters learning to become saints... that we give models to our readers as the most sure way of showing them what it looks and feels like to have that saving relationship with their Creator.
Many times he is necessarily vague. In the New Testament we see him as through Christ--almost necessary for us human beings to see and comprehend? Literature is full of the "imagination's search for God"... I thought last night, at a gathering at a friend's house, they were telling us about Cthulu, describing him as this cosmic being of unspeakable terror from which no one could ultimately escape. I thought, wow, what a great example of the imagination's search for God... for to atheists and those who hate God... God is exactly thus. Maybe he even appears as a terrifying bat-winged squid-headed monstrosity (not literally, obviously, but the imagination might search him this way if this is the quality of the soul's relationship to him).
How we portray God, then, has everything to do with the relationship of the soul who is seeing him. Since in my fantasy world (so far) there is not an Incarnation, all of the approach of the races of the world to God are mainly imaginative and revelatory--the soul, or mind/personality complex (psyche) interpreting and imaging the experiences of the spirit (pneuma) with its Creator.
In literature then we have several choices, and the most popular one in spiritual fiction seems to be to take the camera off of God or of visions or experiences of him, and onto characters whose choices and actions we can see and touch, observing their response to God's work in their spirit. Tolkien does this (even without religion in his fiction he presumes on the truths of religion worked directly into the motives and choices of the characters), Bryan does this too, and hey, God did it HIMSELF with Jesus Christ. Don't trust those pictures and feelings in your mind, persay, but ground them in what is made possible in human life. He did it himself, so of course we are to imitate. Perhaps this is the best way, then, to approach depicting God in fiction. This too is why reading about and studying the lives of the saints can be so profound and useful in one's spiritual life.
Let us write fiction about saints, then.... and characters learning to become saints... that we give models to our readers as the most sure way of showing them what it looks and feels like to have that saving relationship with their Creator.