A Statement Against Christian Science Fiction

Faith & Science Conversation
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I have had a lot of thought on this issue and I wish to talk about “Christian science fiction” and no I am not talking about the novel concept of science fiction but about the ideas that many Christians within the fundamentalist’s communities seem to add things into the Bible where they need not be. There are three types that I remember seeing a lot during my YEC-fundamentalist’s days.

  1. Biblical science fiction: That is people putting modern ideas and concepts into the Bible in order to try and make sense of them/push an agenda. This is broad of course and depends and the motive and theology of each person so I won’t go too long on this. What I would say the issue is that a person puts a post-modern western 21st century ideas into the Bible despite its either plain or historical-cultural context.
  2. Creationist science fiction: I remember this a lot with both AiG and a YEC group I was in on Facebook back in the day. A lot of “science fiction” style work was done to make sense of the history of the earth outside of the “secular” history. Different ideas of what the earth looked like, how culture was like and other crazy stuff. It is one thing for a person to say that they are YEC, I am okay with that, what will make me tilt my head is when they start to talk about pseudoscience and pseudo-history such as that giants were kings and then it goes into conspiracy theories (which most of them do any way).
  3. End times science fiction: This stuff is big mainly here within the American evangelical dispensational premillennial communities. It is the idea of trying to shove modern events and ideas into Revelation or just Bible prophecy in general and thus we get the mess we see a lot when it comes to people “pointing to the end times” and so many upon many failed prophecies.
    Thus, upon these issues, how can we deal and answer these Christian science fictions?
  4. On the Bible itself, we must let it speak plainly when it is obvious and do deep prayer and research into what subject the Bible is going into and avoid putting our modern western ideas into it.
  5. On creationism. we must be patient with these people and let them get out what they need to say and then in a kind and graceful manner present our ideas to them and try and explain the flaws with their way of thinking. We need to show these people that secular history can be trusted and that there is no conspiracy to hide the “truth”.
  6. On the end times. We need to look at these things as symbols pointing to things of a future event. We need to see these symbols for what they are and avoid in trying to do headlines dooms day searching and not pin a certain event to Bible prophecy. Sure, we must be open that these symbols point to future things and certain signs are expected (and what those signs should be are debatable) but when it comes to the end times we need to stop trying to freak out and try or be the first or right group to get the end times right and just simply believe and trust that our Lord will one day return and set all things right. Whether that be Amillennial, Premillennial, Pre or Post Tribulation won’t matter, all that should matter is that our hope is in our Lord’s soon return.
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I would agree with you, and like my Christian fiction and science fiction both to be more subtle and deal with ideas rather than hit you over the head with clumsy analogies and such as most do. I even find Narnia a bit off-putting in that regard, but give it a pass as it is more a children’s book, so the symbolism has to be more concrete and obvious.
In fact, the best Christian books are probably not labeled Christian at all, like “The Sparrow” discussed on this forum some time back, and Marylyn Robinson’s fiction books.

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I object to the first of these

The logical implications of the suggestion here is that either the Bible has nothing to say to modern man or that we must change our thinking to match that of people in the ancient world. Both of these would recommend depositing the Bible into the nearest waste bin.

Instead I think we should employ a little more honesty here and simply acknowledge that we ALL employ ideas and concept that likely did not exist when this text was first written or read, and trash the idea that any of them is more correct because they are more true to how you prefer to imagine people understood them two millennia ago.

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I do believe that the Bible is the Word of God for ALL people for ALL times concerning faith and salvation. Of course we have our biases when it comes to reading the Bible. But what I am saying is that we should try and put the biases away that distort the Word of God and prevent it from speaking what it really needs to say rather then say a message we want it to say. That is what I am advocating for.

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I was aghast when I read a book that a friend of mine at church gave me by a fairly well known radio and TV preacher. It said that blood sacrifice would be reinstituted in the millennium as a memorial or remembrance! That was totally bizarre. I can see extracting that in a literalistic reach from Ezekiel, but good grief.

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Indeed.

By calling this covenant “new,” he has made the first one obsolete; and what is obsolete and outdated will soon disappear. - Hebrews 8:13 (NIV2011)

I look forward to a glorious sacrifice free New Creation. :wink:

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Two things to always consider when reading ancient texts.

  1. What did it mean to those people with their understanding of the world.

  2. How can we relate it to modern and future societies.

Take revelation as you mentioned. To really understand revelation you have to understand the ancient Jewish paradigm to see what the symbolism meant. Then you had to take that information and apply it to how the Jewish community , and gentile , would have understood it in the first century relating to persecution under rome. Then once we have all that understood, we can learn lessons from it and apply it to all of humanity at any time.

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