{"id":6145,"date":"2009-03-11T22:20:48","date_gmt":"2009-03-12T03:20:48","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.epictales.org\/treskillard\/2009\/03\/11\/beauty_and_truth_in_fiction\/"},"modified":"2009-03-11T22:20:48","modified_gmt":"2009-03-12T03:20:48","slug":"beauty_and_truth_in_fiction","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.epictales.org\/treskillard\/2009\/03\/11\/beauty_and_truth_in_fiction\/","title":{"rendered":"Beauty And Truth In Fiction"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>At the end of the last <strong><a href=\"http:\/\/www.csffblogtour.com\/\">CSFF Blog Tour<\/a><\/strong>, <strong><a href=\"http:\/\/ansric.blogspot.com\/\">Stephen L. Rice<\/a><\/strong> and I had a strong discussion regarding <strong><a href=\"http:\/\/www.amazon.com\/exec\/obidos\/asin\/1400072522\">Auralia&#8217;s Colors<\/a><\/strong> and <strong><a href=\"http:\/\/www.amazon.com\/exec\/obidos\/ASIN\/1400072530\">Cyndere&#8217;s Midnight<\/a><\/strong>, and in particular, on the direction <strong><a href=\"http:\/\/lookingcloser.org\/\">Jeffrey Overstreet<\/a><\/strong> was taking the series.<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><strong><a href=\"http:\/\/ansric.blogspot.com\/2009\/02\/cynderes-midnight-3-weak-points.html\">His first post with my comments.<\/a><\/strong><\/li>\n<li><strong><a href=\"http:\/\/ansric.blogspot.com\/2009\/02\/cynderes-midnight-5-response-to-some.html\">His second post responding, with more comments.<\/a><\/strong><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Steve and I were on opposite sides, although I saw some of his points and really do understand where he is coming from.  I hope he saw some things in what I wrote, at least some charity.<\/p>\n<div style=\"float:right; margin-bottom:10px; margin-left:10px\"><a href=\"http:\/\/www.amazon.com\/exec\/obidos\/asin\/1400072522\"><img data-recalc-dims=\"1\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/ecx.images-amazon.com\/images\/I\/51II3qX21aL._SX200_.jpg?w=1200\" alt=\"Auralia's Colors\" title=\"Auralia's Colors\" \/><\/a><\/div>\n<p><strong>My points in these discussions were:<\/strong><\/p>\n<ol>\n<li>that a Christian writer <strong>can<\/strong> have beautiful fiction as their goal, and that the &#8220;Christian&#8221; will come out organically, it will flow, no ooze from the text and seep into the reader.  This is what I saw Jeffrey Overstreet doing. And, I think, this too glorifies God, and can bring people to himself.<\/li>\n<li>As part of this, I argued that when I read Christian fiction, I don&#8217;t require there to be some form of &#8220;organized religion&#8221;, or even a necessary God figure.  What I look for are clear portrayals of good and evil, and for Christian truth to be woven in organically (see point #1).\n<\/li>\n<li>That if one has a high standard (which I respect) like Stephen L. Rice, then they should at least wait until the end of the series before passing judgment.  The story isn&#8217;t done yet!<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n<p><strong>Since then I have planned on putting a post out on this<\/strong>, but the busy-ness of life took over and I never did it. Actually I started once, but the computer crashed.<\/p>\n<p><strong>So today when I read <\/strong><strong><a href=\"http:\/\/maplemountain.blogspot.com\/\">S.D. Smith<\/a><\/strong>&#8216;s two blog posts on this subject, I just HAD to get this out.  Sam says it better than I could, and he not only does so, he points to another excellent source, Abraham Piper (John Piper&#8217;s son) which says it again.<\/p>\n<p>So go to S.D. Smith&#8217;s blog <strong><a href=\"http:\/\/maplemountain.blogspot.com\/2009\/03\/does-christian-art-have-to-have-message.html\">and read his excellent words<\/a><\/strong>. <br \/>\nAlso, go to the Rabbit Room <strong><a href=\"http:\/\/www.rabbitroom.com\/?p=1497&amp;cpage=1\">and read his powerful post there<\/a><\/strong>.<\/p>\n<p><strong>But I won&#8217;t give you the link to Abraham Piper<\/strong>.  Go find S.D.&#8217;s link, and that way I know you read his first! <\/p>\n<p><strong>Beyond that, you may want to read the original TouchStone Magazine article<\/strong> as well, which kicked it all off. But I won&#8217;t give you that link either, so go spelunking at Sam&#8217;s blog posts!<\/p>\n<p>Views: 37<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<div class=\"entry-summary\">\nAt the end of the last CSFF Blog Tour, Stephen L. Rice and I had a strong discussion regarding Auralia&#8217;s&hellip;\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"link-more\"><a href=\"http:\/\/www.epictales.org\/treskillard\/2009\/03\/11\/beauty_and_truth_in_fiction\/\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading<span class=\"screen-reader-text\"> &ldquo;Beauty And Truth In Fiction&rdquo;<\/span>&hellip;<\/a><\/div>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":6146,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[41,6,2,10,3,53,28,12],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6145","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-blog-reading","category-books-authors","category-christian-sf-fantasy-blog-tour","category-christianity","category-fiction-tours","category-jeffrey-overstreet","category-on-writing-fiction","category-poetry","entry"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.epictales.org\/treskillard\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/05\/51II3qX21aL._SX200_9.jpg?fit=200%2C300","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p67v0M-1B7","_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.epictales.org\/treskillard\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6145","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.epictales.org\/treskillard\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.epictales.org\/treskillard\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.epictales.org\/treskillard\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.epictales.org\/treskillard\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6145"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.epictales.org\/treskillard\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6145\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.epictales.org\/treskillard\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/6146"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.epictales.org\/treskillard\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6145"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.epictales.org\/treskillard\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6145"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.epictales.org\/treskillard\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6145"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}