"Fiction"

Fiction

11/30/14

I know that there is a purpose for the various genres of reading material throughout the literary world and it is important that each of these genres is well represented.  I also understand that many of us usually stick to one or two of these genre and basically shun the remaining ones due to lack of interest.  But what if crossing into an unknown or unfamiliar genre would help us in understanding how other people write and think?  It is important for us to ensure that we understand how our enemy thinks so that we may effectively combat his attacks when they are thrown at us.  It may be uncomfortable to perform, but this concept is a must if we are going to survive spiritually.

I guess it would be fairly easy to accept or to figure out that I read a lot.  Some of the topics that God shares with me come from passages in books, other articles and sometimes even movies.  But I have recently noticed that the majority of the topics that I have used for my articles have come from areas that I am interested in or studying about at that moment.  The news and information that I receive from other sources do help as well and provide me with another source of valuable information that accompanies the original referenced material.

My reading skills began to emerge when I was a young boy and for the most part I read the normal fairy tales and adventure stories that would occupy and influence a young mind.  As I grew older my tastes varied a bit more and I ventured into the Young Adult world of reading but as my interests turned from books to girls, my sense of adventure took a huge side turn.  With the normal course of a teenager reading became a chore for me and I turned even further away from one of the more true adventures that I could place into my brain.  In high school I placed reading on the same plane as homework and basically did as little as I could for by now I had totally framed reading as a bad influence and not much was of interest to me any longer; looking back now I had really missed so much by not reading.  I kept this ideology and belief about reading and even maintained this concept through parts of my college years, I had slid backwards so much in this area that my literary skills were basically null.

After I grew out of my teenage years I became more interested in reading and everything that it has to offer me.  After a short time reading some general history books a saying that my parents said to me a long time ago came rushing back into my heart and that was when a person reads it opens their mind to many different settings and it brings out the person’s true imagination.  Reading a book can put the reader into that time frame or at that place where the story or event is taking place.  It is a unique feeling and experience and sadly one that is being ripped away from the youth of today.  But while my reading skills have improved over the last few decades I have stayed true to one bad habit and that is reading only one genre and ignoring the rest.  This I have struggled with for many years now and I have come to the conclusion that it is time for me to venture out a bit more with my subjects.  History shall always be my “first love” but I am finding out more and more that fiction does pay to read at times.

Why do I offer this example as the one to use for this article?  About five or six years ago I was watching a program on TV called “After Words” and one of the great fictional military history writers by the name of Tom Clancy was giving an interview.  Tom Clancy has written many military novels about Cold War operations and situations in which some of his novels have been turned into very successful movies.  During the interview they had a segment where callers could ask questions to Mr. Clancy and one of the questions that was asked of him was why did he write fiction even though he was a praised historian?  His answer stuck out at me at the time but not as much as it does now.  He said that the reason he wrote fiction was that he liked to eat.  That was it, it was short and to the point and in truth he was correct.

There are not many historians out there who authorship subjects flows from everyday people’s lips.  While there are some researchers out there that do not mind doing years of research, write a book and have only about one hundred copies sell.  But the majority of the people want a vast amount of followers and readers so they do not stick to the textbook information per say.  There is nothing wrong with accurate historical fiction that is published through painstakingly detailed information and it is through this type of thinking that Christians need to have when witnessing to people who do not believe in God.

The Bible is not just a group of words that has been randomly written down by a bunch of people.  It is this concept that we need to have in order for us to witness effectively to those that have no clue about the Bible and what it means for our lives.  Most people in western societies do know what the bible is and they have some idea of what the contents of the Bible says, but how in depth are they about the real content matter of this great directory and Constitution?  For example, in the Old Testament there are numerous passages where it talks about the people of Israel.  Who are the people of Israel and why are they important at that time of the story?  Well, the people of Israel means literally a bunch of folks; right?  Ok, if you have a bunch of folks that means you must have many families, right?  And if you have many families it means you have even more individuals, correct?  And when you have individuals this means that you must have just as many individual settings and conditions to go along with those individuals, families, groups, correct?

So, if you have this type of setting, people of Israel, it means that you have a society that is overall represented.  If you place this information into today’s societal categories there would not be much difference with the exception that would be far greater numbers of people that one would be talking about if the reference was being used today.  This means that the people of Israel had choices, differences of opinions, codes of conduct, marriages, deaths, births and every other type of possibilities that a modern society would face.  So in reality, besides the addition of modern technology, the people of Israel themselves are just as we are today.  How many of us think about this when we read the Bible?  I have to be honest and say that up until about two years ago I never placed myself, my family, my community or my society into this picture, and that is where our faults and imaginations have been halted.  For you see, if the people of Israel could have thought about protesting, and they did, why did God respond in the manner that He did?  And if the people of Israel obeyed and lived in covenant with God why did God respond in the manner that He did?  So if the people of Israel did these things and they were humans as we are, that would mean that God has the authority to do exactly what He chose to do in biblical times, today.

And why is this subject important to us?  It is evident that the world and all of its modernity is doing its best to take the relationship away from each one of us.  There are so many gadgets that are provided to us each year that we do not even have enough time in a day to play with them or to use them and then have time to complete the necessities that we need to get done.  Our attention spans have become so limited to our immediate surroundings that we deliberately endanger ourselves and others while we are driving down the road.  Our minds do not have time to sit down and read a decent book or article about the day’s events; we would rather listen to small tidbits about opinionated news blurbs and form our conclusions from there.  There lies the fiction that we deem as nonfiction and has allowed our lives and our societies to be subject to destruction.

In order for us to be effective in our witnessing, we must thoroughly understand what is going on in the world today and we cannot do this unless we first know who is actually pulling the strings of the world.  All of the information that we need to know in order to combat the world is located in the Bible and it is our responsibility to know these true words well enough to present to the world in such a manner that they will understand what is going on.  So far we have managed to argue amongst ourselves about who is right and who has the better options as a religious organizations and all this has produced was a bunch of dead people that might have been won over for Christ.  Boy, what a great weapon we have chosen to use in order to fight our enemy.  At the same time that we are advancing this tactic we are failing to realize that we are aiding and abetting the enemy and making his job a whole lot easier, all the while proclaiming victory in the name of God. 

There is no way possible that we can ever use specific and pinpointed examples from the individuals that lived during the Bible unless their names are specifically stated, but we must understand that there are many opinions that were represented when it was referred to “the people of Israel” or the “children of Israel”.  It is through this type of lives that we must keep in mind that actually represent the relative within our societies today.  While we cannot absolutely witness each individual act, we can ascertain the overall mood and depict the actions of that society based upon what is being presented.  While this is picture presents a fictional setting in our lives, we can take it as non-fiction because of the truth in the overall contingency.

It is through this type of setting that we as humans should watch and notice when our attitudes change.  However, we are so busy caught within our own personal wants and rants that we fail to analyze these conditions and then blindly accept them as if they were the opinion of everyone.  This belief is exactly where the western societies are currently at and even though we have so much built up division within ourselves, we must notice exactly what these types of actions are driving us towards.  We as a civilization are in dire straits and we are now at a crossroads within our societies that a choice needs to be made concerning our spiritual infrastructure and from the looks of the matter even the Church is choosing the worldly standards instead of God’s.

As I am about to venture out once again into the historical fiction world we must also try our best to understand the “fictional world” within the Bible.  I am NOT saying that the Bible is fictional in any way, shape or manner for it is 100% true even down to the sentence structure.  But if we study the Word of God with a pure and complete heart, and when we do this God will show us exactly why the people of Israel had the problems that they did and He will show us exactly why He allowed these things to occur as well.  If we just read the Bible that will be the level that God can share with us and as of now, we have read, read, read, and read the Bible some more but we have refused to study its contents and have rejected what God has tried to show us through our reading.  Nor am I saying for anyone to go and read a passage in Scriptures and then make up a scenario to satisfy your selfish wants and rants, for it is this reason as to why Israel suffered so much through their history and it shall be the exact reason as to why our western nations shall suffer as well.

God provided us with a great and awesome gift and that gift is our mind.  It is our mind and our heart that strive to seek out the truth in everything that we encounter.  But if we do not dig deep into these things it is a guarantee that we will only know a portion of the information that is available, and what kind of truth is that?  It is through the heart and mind that we have the ability to understand exactly what occurred in the lives of the Israelites and the reasons why that those things occurred along with how to avoid them from happening.  So why would we not use what God has given us to ensure that bad and terrible things bypass our existence?  It is called choice and the availability of this word within our lives that conducts our lives and it is through this process that directs how God acts towards His children.

I challenge you to take a close look at what is transpiring in our nation today.  Look at how divided our society is and how many different opinions there are about just one single issue.  If we do not realize that we are in a dangerous position, maybe we need to be destroyed in order to get us out of the way from God’s plan for the world.  Oh, wait a minute that is right, we do not want God in our nation so we can forget about His concerns for us.  You know, in my studying of humans for a while now have come to the realization that the each nation that has suffered some sort of disaster, whether internal or external, has suffered in some type of chaos.  Stop and think about this people, and I mean to use the word people here because this is what I am referring to as the topic of this article.

It is God’s true desire to continue His blessings on this nation and every nation that accepts Him as their guide.  But it is very clear as to what occurs when people reject His ways and His laws for their own beliefs.  But if we do not stop and think about the direction that we are going in and how we are choosing to accept the worldly ways, we are sunk people!  The time is now for us to wake up and to notice our spiritual and physical conditions before God has to act upon the disobedience of His people, His creation.  God gives us warnings before He must act and the reason He acts is because eternity without Him is a VERY long time.

DLB