Wednesday, April 16, 2008

Final Thoughts on Sovereignty

Oh hi. Remember me? I'm the guy that used to blog here regularly...

The last few weeks (and few months in general), have really played havoc with my posting. I haven't given this up, like so many blogs that fade away. Unfortunately, Real Life Interferes (TM) has reared its ugly head in my world recently. I may have found a way to get back to a better schedule, but we'll see when I prove it, eh?

Oh, also I found out I didn't crack my wrist after all, just aggravated a cyst in it. Much better now, thanks.

I wanted to say a few words about God's sovereignty in Christian fiction. I had been talking about it over a few posts (see here for the 4 days of posts) and I didn't want to leave it hanging with nothing else said.

Overall, I briefly described a few ways that authors could deal with the idea of sovereignty on day 4. The books The Shadow and Light and Legend of the Firefish tackled the idea more straightforward in the plot and the worldview of the characters. Ultimately, it is like a lot of things when writing about God: He is transcendent, and it is hard to bring His glory, power, and sovereignty down to the level of human understanding or experience.

Is saying this a cop out? Admittedly, yes. I lost my train of thought with my disruptions. However, I think that God's greatness should challenge Christian writers to take great risks and become the most transcendent authors because of the wonder of Who they write about. And literature does show this: Les Miserable, The Brothers Karamazov, Robinson Crusoe are books with great themes of faith.

Sovereignty is a specifically tricky issue since it means God is in control, but in fiction it can clash with the the author supposedly in control. It will take a great honing of skill to see this issue mastered.

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