In depth

Breaking it down.

/ toseealife / Leave a comment

“[M]an has been accustomed, ever since he was a boy, to having a dozen incompatible philosophies dancing about together inside his head. He doesn’t think of doctrines as primarily “true” or “false,” but as “academic” or “practical,” “outworn” or “contemporary,” “conventional” or “ruthless.” Jargon, not argument, is your best ally in keeping him from the Church. Don’t waste time trying to make him think that materialism is true! Make him think it is strong or stark or courageous—that it is the philosophy of the future. That’s the sort of thing he cares about.”
― C.S. Lewis, The Screwtape Letters

If you haven’t read this book, read it. It is devilishly insightful. (Ha ha.)

I thought I’d follow up on my Your God will be My God post with a post delving a bit more into the why behind the matter.

It’s true that many of the youth of today have no real idea of what it means to believe in something.

But it might be less obvious why that is.

Everyone has their own theory. But the funny thing is, even one person has so many different causes for it that you’ll here the same man blame the government, the school systems, the church, the parents, and the youths themselves, all in the course of one or two conversations on the subject.

So ladies and gents, I am here today to simplify this mess as best as I can. I believe you can narrow every single problem down to three basic causes.

But first let me define what problems I mean a bit more:

I am referring to the moral ambiguity or just plain confusion of the younger generations.

I am referring to the spinelessness of the older generations in general to stand against this tide.

I am referring to the blind adherence to the principals of society that many people exhibit.

I am referring to the unbelievable corruption of the authorities of said society.

There now, I hop that’s enough to intrigue everyone.

First of all, as Lewis points out in the above, youth now (and then when he wrote it) hear scores of different worldviews presented to them. Often the worldviews are blended into each other so that they are barely distinguishable. Every one declares their personal worldview to be true. The youth is often not given any measuring stick to go by, and so remains confused and unable to stick to any one thing.

But what has changed in the past sixty years is that now, many people will not even try to compel the youth to believe in what they themselves believe in. Instead they will say “whatever works for you.”

This philosophy is fed to the youth from every imaginable source, including their parents and all too often the church, so if they meet someone who thinks that’s a load of crap, they think that person is the odd one out, never realizing that in terms of history, they are the oddballs. (Every homeschooler’s experience.)

But that’s where the second problem comes in. The older generations may not even totally believe that philosophy, but they are afraid to go against it because a lot of major power sources in the world are busy promoting this idea. Unfortunately, often the courageous men or women who dare to oppose are shut down by said sources, sometimes they are shut down by their own friends or fellow workers.

This explains why people blindly go along with this stuff. And why the most corrupt individuals are the ones who rise to power in this sick system.

But I can break it down more than that.

This is nothing new. The root cause of all this is the same thing: Sin.

Sin comes in three parts. There’s the sin of the individual, the sin of the world at large, and the sin of the devil. And I mean what he causes specifically.

It might sound nuts to blame the devil, but if you can’t accept that, then think of it as the reason why sin keeps getting worse. Something is constantly causing new ways for people to be corrupt, call it what you will, you can’t deny that things get worse over time.

The sin of the individual in this case is that every human being is selfish, and every human being tends to think more of themselves then they should. IT is all too easy for people to be lazy about what they believe. Pluralism is not popular because it is wise, peaceful, or inducing to happiness; it’s popular because it’s convenient and easy. A get out of jail-free card.

The sin of the world is that as a whole, people tend to act in the worst ways. Peer pressure, mob mentality, you know the drill. Sometimes that’s not the case, but whenever a lot of people get upset, sooner or later some of them will let their emotions get the better of reason.

And that stems back to individual sin.

And then all you need is some misguided or misguiding leader to step up and you get a whole movement going which could be pure idiocy. Often it turns to pure evil. (Holocausts, the reign of terror, the after effects of the Civil War and Civil Rights movement.)

Messed up people create messed up societies which choose messed up leaders, and so the cycle goes till a righteous generation chooses to end it.

But this generation is being robbed of the ability to even figure out what righteousness is.

The thing is, Pluralism is spoken of like its a fact. But it’s a belief. By its own philosophy, it has no more credit than any other morality.

But it keeps its followers blind to its own contradictions. They stay that way because of sin.

But there is hope.

One thing pluralism cannot change is that some people do instinctively know that right and wrong are real. And these people may yet see through the deception.

But it would help if more of us could help them see that the deception exists.

Not wanting our beliefs challenged is an old human flaw, if it even is a flaw. (I think it’s really just a twisted version of a very healthy wish for stability.) But we need them to be.

And by the way, there is a cure for the sin problem. It’s Jesus.

Those are my thoughts on this for now, until next time–Natasha.

Your God will be my God.

/ toseealife / Leave a comment

You know what the most important question anyone can ask you is? What do you believe?

I think we undervalue this question now. Everyone has an opinion, but no one has to be affected by it anymore. Our opinions are just floating around on the breeze.

Funnily enough, that used to be how we’d define not having any beliefs.

I feel like if one of the heroes of even two centuries ago (or even one) was to come back alive and see how we think now, they wold be incredulous.

They would be disgusted with out lack of backbone.

Now that is not everyone, I understand; but here’s the thing, this pluralism has become like the flu, it sneaks up on you and breaks in new ways that aren’t always recognizable as what it is.

I would venture to say that a lot of young people and plenty of older ones are believing in pluralism without even being aware of it.

Here’s why I think this:

I’ve complained before of how young people will just shrug when it comes to moral issues. You know the drill, if it gets too difficult for them, they just say “Well everyone’s entitled to their opinion.” They say it automatically without thinking about it. And they will defend that position up until they or you are too frustrated to keep talking, but they will never stop to think they might be defending something that has no basis in reality.

I don’t blame them for the nonsense that they are taught, I blame them for being unwilling to question it. Not that that’s anything new. People have always been that way and it is just more obvious now than it used to be.

The thing is, I hear this from christian youth as often as non-christian. I am always surprised that they can shrug off the problems with certain movies and music and lifestyles as being “that person’s choice” or “what they believe.”

Then it hit me: The thing I have never considered is that the youth of today think that Christianity is their religion because they personally believe it. Not because it is superior to any other in of itself.

I really think this is it, and with other religions than Christianity too.

Nowadays it is almost nationally accepted that people believe what works for them, because it works for them, and not because it is fact.

Now you can disagree about facts all day long, and someone is sure to be nearer the truth than the other, but neither may have it totally correct. That is a legitimate debate and one that can be given more or less credit based on observation.

But if observation itself is reduced to a matter of personal taste, then what are we left with? Nothing but flimsy opinions that have no real foundation.

It is actually inconceivable to many youth that there could be One Right Belief. And if you say you think there is, they will get frustrated at you from being so stubbornly opinionated.

If it’s true that people believe what suits them best, why do we have martyrs? Why do we have zealots and radicals?

Do you think radical Islam is the religion that best suits the needs of most of the people who believe it? Or is it just what their taught and never allowed to question? They may very well fervently believe it. But that doesn’t make it true.

Pluralism is destroying a lot of people’s souls, they believe it, does it follow that it’s good for them?

Has it been good for the country overall? Or any country that’s fallen into it?

The answer, if you look at statistics and not at the Media, is no. A resounding no.

I would venture to say this country has never been worse off than it is now.

The people in this country have no respect for it anymore. People on both the left and right end of the spectrum.

I can’t say I exactly blame all of them. Our country has been divided so long it’s no longer debatable. (It’s about the only thing both sides agree upon.) The truth is, when there are no absolute values, then there can be no healthy country. There is no way to keep people in order who can’t tell right from wrong. even criminals used to know they were criminals. Now they will defend thier actions as not wrong but just freedom of expression. OR just them not bieng able to control themselves becuase of how messed up they are.

And sadly, even in the Church, many people don’t actually believe in Christianity in full.

The very basis of Christianity is that there is one God. He decides what’s right and wrong. Either we are for him, or we are against him. There is no gray area. There is no middle ground. There is no thin line between Him and the Evil One. No, the line is a huge chasm. The difference is whether you fall into it or not.

People can reject this view. But if they say they believe it, they better realize that means the cannot believe anything else. If something contradicts the Bible, it’s out.

I say this because it is something millennials really don’t understand about faith. Faith involves loyalty to one person or one group of people. It means their enemy is your enemy, their friend is your friend.

Ruth understood this. She knew that if she went with Naomi it meant she could no longer worship a pagan god. “Your people will be my people, your God will be my God, where you die I will die, and there I will be buried.” She told her.

One last thing: I do not say that every young christian who has pluralism mixed up with their faith is damned. I think many of them are sincere and godly in other ways and don’t realize the contradiction in their theology. I would even say their own souls may not be in danger.

But the problem is, other peoples’ are. Everyone’s soul is in danger when it has no rock to hold onto.

So here’s to the faithful ones who still are holding on to absolute truth. You’re not alone.

–Natasha.

 

 

 

 

A myth retold.

/ toseealife / Leave a comment

You ever hear the myth of Cupid and Psyche? It’s pretty cool. It was the inspiration for my favorite book “Till we have faces.”

In a nutshell it’s Beauty and the Beast with a few strange twists.

Psyche is a beautiful beyond belief woman, who is being worshiped instead of the goddess Aphrodite (who is goddess of love and beauty) which makes Aphrodite furious, so she sens her son Eros (whom we all know by his roman name Cupid) to make Psyche fall in love with some hideous person or beast. In the process however, he accidentally scratches himself with the point of an arrow and falls  in love with her himself.

Well, you can imagine how Aphrodite feels about this, but she doesn’t do anything for awhile. Psyche goes to an oracle for advice, since she’d getting lonely and tired of only being worshiped and not really loved, the oracle (I believe upon Aphrodite’s instruction) tells her she is fated to marry a monster. Well, Psyche isn’t too happy about this, but somehow( the reasons vary) she ends up on a cliff and the West Wind comes an carries her to this great palace. Where he is waited on by invisible servants and visited at night by her husband. Whom she never sees. (This is like the original Beauty and the Beast, not the Disney version.)

Psyche is enjoying herself with no qualms until her sisters pay her a visit. (Either Eros lets them or his mother or they somehow find her themselves, I’m not sure.) We’ll say Eros lets them in this account. Her sisters fill her head with suspicions about her husband, what if he really is a hideous monster? Finally she agrees to look at him by night, the very thing she was forbidden to do. So she does this that night, but he turns out to be a gorgeous god with angel wings. While she’s gaping at him in adoration a drop of hot candle wax falls on him from her lap. He wakes up, scolds her for breaking his trust, and leaves her there. Aphrodite hears all about it and decides to punish Psyche in some pretty dramatic ways. She sets her a lot of tasks that seem impossible. But creatures ranging from ants, to eagles, to other gods, all help her complete the tasks.

Finally she is given one last task. Getting beauty from Persephone, the queen of the underworld. Psyche successfully gets a cask from her, but even though she was warned not to look in it, she does. (Some say because she wanted to look better for her husband whom she was supposed to be reunited with.) Well, it turns out what was in the box was death. Or else the beauty in it was so intense no mortal mind could take it in. Whatever the case Psyche immediately passes out. Either into death or just unconsciousness.

Eros finally comes back to her, after being kept away by his mother for a long time, and revives her. Then he brings her up to Olympus and she is given immortality. Zeus patches things up between her and Aphrodite somehow, and they all live happily ever after. (As much as Greek gods do.) Psyche also is given wings. Butterfly like wings if I remember correctly.

In Greek psyche means “Soul” and I’ve also heard it means “butterfly.” Which I think fits. I think the Greeks were onto a thing or two when they came up with this myth.

The myth is a metaphor for the soul. I’m sure it’s been interpreted different ways, but here’s my guess at it: The soul has to mate with love in order to fly. But before it can be fully united to true love, it must be free of its bondage to selfish, vengeful, jealous love (represented by Aphrodite.) That kind of love is just lust really, it wants to be admired and fulfilled but never give anything back in return. And if you know anything about Greek mythology, you know Aphrodite is responsible for screwing a lot of people up because of her matchmaking. (To her credit, she also makes some happy marriages along the way.)

Eros, or Cupid is considered a monster because he forces people to fall for each other with his arrows. People fear love because it leads to many reckless things. At least I always thought that’s what it meant.

C. S. Lewis puts a different spin on it when he shows that people fear Eros because they do not understand him, nor do they know him. Even though by all accounts Aphrodite does more to mess people up, Eros gets the credit for the damage she does. Eros is seen as a  brute because he seems to devour people. In that they are never seen again after they are taken to him. But Lewis digs deeper and shows that after being with a god, mortals are ruined for ever being content with mere mortal companionship again. Which makes their families angry and jealous, and makes other immortals like Aphrodite furious.

The really odd part is where Psyche dies. In any other Greek Myth, she’d be doomed for disobeying Aphrodite’s instructions. (It happened to other people.) But in this one, in an odd twist, she is forgiven and brought back with no lasting consequences. And she is reunited with her husband and made immortal. Did you catch that? The soul is made immortal after being united with love?

What’s really interesting is that I’m fairly certain this myth predated Christianity, yet all the basic elements of Christianity are in there. Psyche breaks the god’s command, ends up enslaved to another god who wants to punish her, she dies, she is resurrected, and she lives forever; because of love.

On top of that, Eros is Aphrodite’s son, so you could also see it as a representation of how Christ atones for us and makes us right with the Father.

It’s a powerful myth because it rings true. It’s one of the only Greek myths I know of where mercy wins out over the gods queer justice. It also reflects the truth, as Lewis shows, that the gods ways are unsearchable for mortals.

I like the myth both in its original form and in its retelling and I can’t figure out why no one is doing a retelling of it in movie form. Someone get on that!

Anyway, I hope you liked it, until next time–Natasha.

On purity and brokenness.

/ toseealife / 1 Comment

So today I have a difficult topic to tackle. This has been on my mind for awhile but I didn’t know if I was ready to go public with it. But I think until I do it’s going to bother me.

I know I’m not the only person to have experienced this, in fact probably all of you have more than once even, so here goes.

Some time ago I was meeting up with some friends, and in the course of a late night chat with a few of them, I learned that one of them had compromised their purity, multiple times.

This is not an usual thing, sadly enough. (By the way for those of you who don’t know, purity is the christian word for virginity and freedom from lust.)

But that wasn’t all. This person was still in that relationship and her family wasn’t too happy about it. She was also unwilling to break it off, and unwilling to separate from the guy to go to a different school for a while, as one person had recommended.

There is no one way to handle such situations, but to my horror, the other people in the room began telling her there was grace for that.

I may make quite a few people mad by sharing this, but it won’t be the first time if I do, so I’ll continue.

I was shocked, more at these other girls than at the one who had made the confession. In disbelief I began to tell her that, while I didn’t believe she was condemned, she needed to put an end to this if she really cared about the guy in question and her relationship with God. I made it pretty clear that this was not okay.

None of them really liked what I had to say. The girl herself got mad at me and ended up ending the conversation.

Now it wasn’t all so smooth at the time as it sounds in the retelling, but you get the idea.

I can’t tell you how much this incident bothered me and continues to bother me.

I witnessed first hand what damage compromising can do and I want to talk about it.

I don’t think it’s biblical to be overly harsh with those who have stumbled. It does happen. But it happens for different reasons.

Sometimes the person is rebellious.

Sometimes they are broken and do it compulsively.

Sometimes they are just filled with lust and lose their heads.

Whichever it is, each has to be handled differently. But I’m going to address the second one.

I have talked about this before on this blog. Some people, especially girls, tend to live in sexual sin because they feel somehow that they deserve it or are trapped in it and cannot escape. In can be because they were molested or raped, or abused in some other way, or because they gave in one time and felt that they already lost it all.

Most often these girls would not have fallen had they had better support form their family and friends, or if they did fall, they could have got back up again.

Actually, they still could and some have. The biggest lie in the whole business is that there is no turning back. There are women who have. Ones who aren’t even religious but just feel that the lifestyle is wrong.

But many believe they can’t ever get back what they lost.

It’s true that you can never forget that you made that choice. But there is healing from it, and there is restoration.

Sometimes women (and I’ve heard this personally more than once) believe that because they were raped or molested, their purity was stolen and they cannot get it back anyway, whether they wanted to lose it or not.

As a woman I understand it is terrible to feel helpless. And maybe they choose promiscuity because in some way they feel they have control again.

Rape is a terrible thing. There is no softening that.

But, and this will be hard to swallow, even the rapist can be a broken person themselves who does not fully realize what they are doing.

They have no excuse; but perhaps it might be easier for the woman if she could understand that the only way to heal the hurt is to stop spreading it. Whether it’s through what she does to herself or to what she does not choose to put an end to in other people.

Most people will agree that being raped does not equal losing you purity. Christians especially feel that God does not see it that way. In fact losing your virginity is not equal to losing your purity at all. Married people are still pure.

The girl I mentioned before felt that it was too late for her. That she was already on the downward slope, and she took my admonishment/rebuke as confirmation of that.

To be clear, I told her more than once that it was not too late. That she could be forgiven. And I believe that.

What she heard was not what I was saying. She heard what she was already afraid of deep down, and she probably knew that, in a way.

The problem was, she didn’t want to be free bad enough. She thought she and this guy loved each other.

Maybe they did in a way; but not enough to protect each other. Not enough to stop deceiving her family or going behind their backs. Not enough to respect her beliefs.

There are a lot of factors that would make breaking off that kind of relationship hard. Those kinds of problems tend to run in the family. But it does not excuse ignoring that problem.

Nor does it in any way justify people who are outside the situation refusing to admit it is a sin.

It’s kind of taboo to call it that anymore. As a church in general, Christians have taken a more compassionate view of teenage promiscuity. We have been willing to acknowledge it’s more than just teens trying to be wicked on purpose. In fact, that’s probably only a small percentage of the teens who participate in it. Most of them are doing it out of brokenness.

But there is no place in the Bible or in life when brokenness makes something okay.

It’s like driving around with bad brakes, if you get in an accident, it was at least partly your fault for not getting your brakes fixed. You didn’t mean to get into an accident, but you did without seeing it coming.

Or, as happened to me recently, you don’t even know the brakes are bad because you lack experience with them, and find out only after you start driving. Then it would be on the person who didn’t warn you.

But in no way does that change that bad brakes are a hazard to you and the people around you. It would be stupid to say that the brakes were okay because it’s forgivable that you didn’t know about them.

And that’s the difference. Sexual immorality is a sin. Whether it’s done intentionally or by lack of being prepared.

Telling someone that it is okay to sin is never right because it’s the same as telling them the car their driving is safe when it’s not. You could get them killed. Figuratively or literally.

But I don’t want anyone to read this and then think it’s okay to be a jerk to someone who is stuck in sin. I am all for being compassionate…but not delusional. There’s a difference.

I have a feeling this message may never be popular, but it is still important. My biggest regret is that I could not help this girl I knew. I couldn’t because I had neither her full trust, nor any back up from anyone who cared enough to tell her the truth. Except those whom she’d already refused to listen to.

I hope in the future I will have better answers. But I recognize that there is no forcing people to choose differently.

But I just want to point out, no one is forcing them to keep choosing the same thing either.

Freedom is available. All you have to do is want it bad enough.

One last thing, I don’t claim to have it all figured out or that this post was an extensive look at this issue. It’s a small peek into it, that’s all. There’s a lot more books and talks on it that would be better for anyone concerned with the subject to check out.

I’d recommend “Purity,” by Kris Valloton. (It’s less preachy then it sounds.)

“Kissed the girls and made then cry,” by Lisa Bevere.

And the “Message to teens,” sermon by James Robinson.

Until next time–Natasha.

Mary Poppins

/ toseealife / Leave a comment

If I may wax nostalgic without ripping off some popular you-tubers, I’d like to look back on this classic.

I just watched it today, and it seems, like all classics, to have more in it than I realized as a child.

Since I grew up right as Disney was transitioning more and more to 3D and coming to the end of it’s Renaissance phase (that’s all the 2D princesses and princes after Sleeping Beauty,) I never found the really old films quite as interesting to re-watch, but I felt their charm and I think it’s shame a lot of kids now haven’t even watched these classics.

Mary Poppins is at least a perennial favorite movie of mine. I always wanted to ride those merry-go-round horses (it used to really frustrate me that I knew they weren’t real) hop into pictures, laugh on the ceiling and dance on rooftops.

I also have seen Saving Mr. Banks, so that lent the movie even more meaning. I remember asking my mom once during Mary Poppins, while Bert was talking/singing to Mr. Banks, why he was doing so. She told me he was trying to help him learn the lesson Mary Poppins was trying to teach him. I wasn’t entirely clear on what that lesson was. I’d often ask my mom questions about stuff I had already figured out just to hear what she would say, and often she’d say something I hadn’t thought of though basically agreeing with me.

So, that said. What do I think about the movie now that I’m older?

I think that in the end there are two basic messages of the film, and they are expressed in different ways through the whimsical things that happen.

The secondary message is that life needs a little wonder in it and a little fun in everything, or it isn’t worthwhile. I know that this movie influenced my attitude about chores and other tasks. I play music and sing when I clean just because it’s more fun  hat way and I’m more likely to finish the task. Oh the tedious hours of cleaning before I clued in to this trick. Ugh.

Now my mom might just listen to a radio talk show, or nothing at all, not everyone needs to use this method; but the point is, especially if you’re young, you don’t like grueling work.

And who doesn’t want a merry-go-round horse that can go off the carousal? I wish.

The funny thing is, though I didn’t like Mr. Banks, I knew he was right that those things weren’t real. Even Mary Poppins never admits that they were and seems affronted at even doing them half the time. I was that kid who grows up knowing Santa Claus isn’t real, and frankly the Easter Bunny was never appealing to me. And fairies aren’t real, and so on.

Yet I never ceased to enjoy stories aobut those things, or to wish in a way that they were real. And now I believe in them in a different sort of way.

I don’t believe that Santa Claus is real, but I believe in the possibility of things like Santa Claus. I don’t believe Mary Poppins is real, but I do believe that there are people just as wondrous as her who don’ get have the recognition. Remember that real life is stranger than fiction and their are weirder things than tea parties on the ceiling.

Heck, in the very same movie Mr. Banks references the Boston Tea Party, and that story is almost as odd as an actual tea part defying gravity.  I mean, colonists dressed as Native Americans? Seriously? Why would the Natives have thrown tea overboard? It was almost comical…funny. Like the tea party on the ceiling…hmm.

Anyway, the Primary message of Mary Poppins hits even closer to home. It’s about how adults can get to where they miss the little things that are so important.

You see, fixing the children’s kite, the tuppence, the feeding the birds, they are all of a piece. They are all little things. Things that seem to a busy man like a waste of time. He is focused on railroads, bridges, tea plantation, etc. All noble things perhaps (it’s debatable) but are they necessarily more important?

It’s an age old dilemma that adults have been trying to answer forever. Is it more important to be contributing the world in general and helping humanity or is it more important to be at home with your family making real memories. And people have answered it different ways. There’s a big movement now, especially among feminists and Hollywood, that we can have both.

But the fact is, that is almost impossible. Some few people can make it work, but most can’t prioritize family and work equally.

Which is more important? Mr. Banks comes to think that it is his family. Time goes by so fast, and kids will grow up, perhaps not hating their parents who neglected them, but never having that kind of bond with them that kids who felt valued did.

I can personally attestify to this. Once childhood is gone, it’s gone. Adult children can become close to their parents even after years of estrangement, but it’s a different kind o close. It can be just as good but never just as innocent as the first.

That’s why we need to treasure childhood instead of trying to rid ourselves of it, as Mr. Banks does at first.

The spoon full of sugar metaphor is pretty clear, a little sweetness is not hard to give, and it pays dividends in relationships.

The fixing of the kite ties all three metaphors together. The tuppence for paper and string, the kite, and the sweetness even after the medicine of being fired and disgraced.

Little things are important.

As an author and a reader I notice how often in stories little events end up being what the whole ending is hinged on. Often our Salvation turns on the smallest thing.

Big things are important of course, but the secret may actually be that big things are composed of many small things suddenly coming together. That’s my experience.

Those are my thoughts, until next time–Natasha.

Stranger than fiction.

/ toseealife / Leave a comment

Stranger than fiction.

It’s the title of a movie, I’ll bet there’s probably a book called that too. It’s also an old saying “Real life is stranger than fiction.”

You know what’s funny to me? How demanding we are now about our entertainment. There are still folks who aren’t picky. But especially among millennials and younger, we’ve got a lot of critics who want to find their fiction believable.

I’m guilty of this too, and hey, it’s not exactly wrong. I’m all for having standards. It’s not that that bothers me.

It’s that these standards are often ridiculous.

Fiction creators are held up to almost impossible standards. Everything that happens in their imaginary world needs to line up with everything else. They get criticized if there’s a detour into a subject unrelated to the main plot, even though if all of a story is just about one main plot, it can be flat and lacking in depth. If their characters aren’t funny or really emotional, than they’re flat. (It couldn’t just be that not everyone has to be either really funny or really volatile. Or stoic.)

They get accused of making characters stereotypical or cliche, but are also expected to play into certain stereotypes like “strong female character” or “doubtful hero,” or “compelling villain.”

We put a lot on these poor folks who just want to tell us an interesting story. Some of the most beloved stories of all time don’t make sense, that’s part of their charm.

And we’d be wise to take a look at why that is, and learn from it.

Take “Alice in Wonderland” for example. If you are western European, you have heard of this story. It used to be the number one required children’s book in England. It may still be. (Google it someone.) This story is famously nonsensical. But I like how Jim Weiss described such nonsense. “It makes sense, but in it’s own whimsical way.”

Alice runs into a lot of silliness, but mixed in with all that are some important lessons in humor error and in logic and the value of certain things. IT also turns a lot of the phrase we use on our own heads, and so teaches us that words ae important. In fact books like the Alice books, and the Phantom Tollbooth, and Mary Poppins, all foster a love of words in the reader. I sound like the prolouge to a classic by an editor, but it’s true nonetheless.

But what I find most important of all about these books is that they challenge the persepctive on life that even children may take too seriously. Alice i a know-it-all, Milo
(Tollbooth) is bored and finds nothing around him to be worthwhile, and Jane and Michael tend to be close minded about new things. The whimsical things that happen to all of those children teach them to enjoy life more and see wonder in things that they never paid attention to. The Narnia books do the same thing in a more gentle and subtle way.

And it’s good for all of us to have to stretch our minds to see things a different way. To understand that there may be different rules than the ones we know, or that we may just only know part of the story.

Okay, so what do my two subjects have to do with each other? I’m getting to that.

We have two choices in life, ladies in gentlemen, and all our important decisions will fall into one of these categories. Good and Bad.

But good doesn’t just mean moral, it means good for you.

And our attitude toward fiction is way more important to our well being than we give it credit for.

We can either demand that we understand every little thing, in every single part, after just one time with a story. Or, we can let it sink in a little deeper, and move us; or puzzle us and thereby cause us to think and hopefully to grow.

See, all this criticism and nitpicking, it’s our way of trying to protect ourselves. Not even from bad ideas, but just from liking things that it would somehow reflect badly on us to like. We don’t want to be fooled again.

There is some wisdom in that, but we have carried it way too far as a culture. It’s really just used to keep us from ever being challenged in the way we look at things. Because as long as we can pick something to pieces, we don’t have to admit it has a point. And as long as we can assign whatever meaning we want to it (whether it be less or more than the creator intended) then we don’t have to ask ourselves what the actual meaning was.

If we can explain it, then it can’t hurt us.

That’s what we think.

But if everything must be explained, then I’ll be the first to say fiction is fiction indeed.

Nothing in fiction is more unreal than when it all makes sense. Because if you haven’t noticed, real life does not make sense.

In real life, things happen for a reason, but it’s not always a reason we know. Or like. In real life phenomenons take place that we can’t understand or explain. In real life, outcomes are not always predictable. Most of all, in real life things cannot be dismissed just because we disagree with them or find fault with them. We actually have to work out problems in real life.

That’s why I take fiction seriously. Because it ought to be helping us deal with real life, since fiction is actually far simpler.

So demanding it be perfect is demanding something you are never going to see in this life. And demanding it be compelling is pointless. Because most fiction can’t force you to be compelled, you have to choose whether to care or not. And it’s no big surprise that those who don’t care about fictional events on the basis that it’s boring will not care about real events in a deep way.

Life is most definitely stranger than fiction, and the best fiction reminds us of that fact so we can become more flexible.

Those are my thoughts for now, until next time–Natasha.