Book Review: The Silver Suitcase

Posted on November 17, 2016 by Barbara Harper

I don’t remember where I saw The Silver Suitcase by Terrie Todd mentioned, but when it came up for a Kindle/Audible sale, I got it.

It begins with a young girl in Canada in the 1980s starting a school project with her grandmother about WWII. Part 1 features the grandmother, Cornelia’s, experiences at the end of the Depression and into the beginning of the war; Part 2 takes place in modern times with the granddaughter, Benita, grown and married with two children. In Part 3 Benita is given her grandmother’s old diaries and discovers much about her that she did not know. Throughout the latter parts, the scene jumps back and forth between Cornelia’s and Benita’s time frames, but it is not too confusing to follow since each chapter starts with the date.

Cornelia’s mother died when she was 12, and she had to quit school early to help her father run their farm. At a fairly young age she is doing everything a grown woman would do to maintain a household. She has never forgiven God for taking her mother so early, though she hides that fact from anyone else. Her diary is the only place she honestly pours out her heart. When she meets the son of her mother’s old friend, her life takes a turn for the better. But a tragedy and a momentous secret drive her to the point of desperation.

Benita’s husband has been out of work for some time, and the strain is wearing on their marriage. A series of losses, especially that of her grandmother, and a new opportunity for the family only add to the strain. Her mother gives her a silver suitcase that her grandmother wanted her to have. Besides several mementos, it contains decades worth of her grandmother’s old diaries. Benita learns of a side of her grandmother that she never knew and can hardly fathom: how can her sweet-faith-filled grandmother have ever been so vitriolic in her hatred of God?

The story is a good one, and there were several little touches I liked.A couple of my favorite lines:

Neither the why answers nor the how answers will satisfy your heart. One day, you will have both. But even if you could grasp them now, they would not heal your wounds. Only love can do that. And God loves you more than you can ever understand or imagine.

But most of the time, his words soothed her. It reminded her of her childhood, when she had come in crying with a skinned knee. How good it felt when her mother washed it off, pulled her onto her lap, carefully applied ointment to the knee, and gently rocked her to sleep. Although the cleansing stung, it was wonderful to feel so loved and cherished.

But one part was a major red flag to me.

This is the second book I’ve read recently involving somebody meeting their guardian angel. I hope it’s not becoming a trend. I can see it occasionally as a plot device (a la It’s a Wonderful Life), when the audience knows the writer isn’t really intending us to believe that this happened.

But in Christian fiction, it feels like cheating in a sense. Many might like a heavenly messenger to come down and tell us in person what God wants us to know and be able to ask him questions, but it’s far from likely. I think it would be more helpful and meaningful to show the character discovering spiritual truth through the Bible or a Christian friend. I know that’s not as dramatic, but it’s more realistic.

Nevertheless, I can live with an angel as part of a story, though it’s not my favorite. But there is an emphasis on Cornelia’s looking in his eyes that I find kind of disturbing, as if that’s somehow more reassuring than anything else:

When Cornelia looked directly into his eyes she could see that he spoke the truth. No one had ever looked at her like that.

She believed in a creator, and she believed in Jesus. She had found it difficult to accept that he loved her. But now, looking into this messenger’s face, there was no denying that fact.

Now, having looked into the eyes of Aziel, she saw things so much differently.

But worst of all, she writes much later in her diary, “I maintain my friendship with Jesus by talking to him daily…I read my Bible, too, but it’s still my experience of last December, of actually having his messenger beside me, which sustains me.”

The apostle Peter had one of the most marvelous experiences ever, something which only two others shared, when they saw Jesus glorified before their eyes. But after describing it, he said: “We have also a more sure word of prophecy; whereunto ye do well that ye take heed, as unto a light that shineth in a dark place, until the day dawn, and the day star arise in your hearts: Knowing this first, that no prophecy of the scripture is of any private interpretation. For the prophecy came not in old time by the will of man: but holy men of God spake as they were moved by the Holy Ghost” (II Peter 19-21). God’s Word is more sure than even the most exalted religious experience.

Thankfully the author does have Cornelia sharing spiritual truth later in the book. Cornelia doesn’t tell anyone about this experience. It’s just sad to me that that’s what “sustains” her.

I also disagreed with a section where someone says, “Jesus comes in all shapes and sizes. You need to learn to see him in every pair of eyes you lock onto.” True, we’re all made in God’s image, and Jesus said whatever we have done “unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me” (Matthew 25:31-46). I think the truth of either of these two passages would have made a stronger case for what the author is trying to say in this section, and probably that’s what she means by seeing Jesus in every pair of eyes. But Jesus isn’t actually in every person we meet. The distinction is made in several places in the Bible. Just one example: “Whoever has the Son has life; whoever does not have the Son of God does not have life” (I John 5:12).

So, I obviously have mixed emotions about this one. The story was fairly interesting, but due to some of the other issues, I probably won’t be seeking out this author again.

Genre: Inspirational fiction
My rating: for the story itself, maybe a 7 out of 10, but due to the theological problems, a 5 out of 10.

(Sharing with Semicolon‘s Saturday Review of Books and Carol‘s Books You Loved )

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Odds and Ends

Posted on November 15, 2016 by Barbara Harper

It’s a hazy day in Eastern TN. Perhaps you’ve heard of some of the fires in the area. By this report there were some 67 of them as of noon Tuesday. There are fires in SC, NC, and Kentucky as well. We haven’t had rain in weeks, quite unusual for this area, and none is in the forecast for at least the next week. The report I mentioned said visibility is only 50 feet in some areas, and my son said he couldn’t see the sun through the haze on some parts of his drive to work this morning. It’s not that bad at our house, but if we’re out and about even just to run errands, we come home with irritated throats and sometimes irritated eyes and nasal passages. A friend in the Tablerock Park area of SC has seen a fire that has burned over 2500 acres actually visibly come closer to his house. All his neighbors have each other on a group text so they can alert each other if there is a sudden need to evacuate.

If you think of it and feel so led, we’d sure appreciate prayer that the fires would be put out with as little damage as possible as soon as possible and that God would send rain.

In other news…..

Craft shows used to be one of my biggest joys. The first two cities we lived in had big ones around Christmas time. The third place we lived was not too far from the first, so I eagerly drove over for the big craft fair in December – but it was immensely smaller and looked more like a home and garden show, with businesses selling swimming pools and windows and even teeth brighteners rather than crafters selling their wares. I was so disappointed. I’ve seen one advertised here the last couple of years, but just hadn’t made it out to it. This year I made plans to go with Jason and Mittu. It was so fun. It was still smaller than some of the big ones I used to see, and there were a few home and garden type booths, but mainly it was just a big old fashioned craft show. I was so happy! I did notice an absence of a couple of typical booths I used to see: tole painting and kid’s wooden toys. I always liked the tole painting because I couldn’t do it. 🙂 I wonder if anyone does any more? And I think, with all the light plastic toys we can buy for kids these days, parents got away from the heavier wooden ones.

The only thing I came away with was a wooden heart ornament and a wonderful piece of apple cake, but there are a couple of things I wish I had gotten.

I would have bought some dish towels – I like the thicker, heavier kind, which is getting harder to find any more, and one booth had them with the little crochet part at the top where you can button it to a cabinet or stove handle. I was looking at them, trying to decide if I liked the crocheted part and looking through the designs, but the older man at the booth just wouldn’t leave me alone to look. He kept saying things like, “These are good an heavy, here feel this one. There are Christmas designs back here – here, come and look,” etc. I just left. I guess I could have said, “Thanks, I’d like to just look at the designs and decide which one I want,” but I didn’t think of it. I’ve never liked craft booths or farmer’s market booths or garage sales where the sellers feel like they constantly have to try to sell to you.

At any rate, it was a fun time, and I am looking forward to next year already.

Speaking of sales people, I got a call last night from a company I ordered a dress from online. I don’t normally answer the phone if I don’t recognize the number, but Jim answered it. The caller said the dress was on the way to me, and I said I had already received it. She said, in an excited voice, “Did you try it on? What did you think?” I said I liked it, but I really didn’t like phone calls like this. 🙂 So she said they would put me on a do not call list. I hope this is not a new thing!!!

Lastly, to leave you with a Timothy-ism…he has been doing a good job learning his colors lately. They were at a restaurant which was playing bluesy music over the PA system, and Timothy was trying to sing along. Jason asked him, “Timothy, are you singing the blues?” Timothy said, “Um….orange.” 🙂

Laudable Linkage

Posted on November 12, 2016 by Barbara Harper

I usually only share these every couple of weeks, but I had a good list today, and some of them are timely, so here goes:

Freedom From the Tyranny of Hyperspirituality. Yes!

Love Your Neighbor Enough to Speak the Truth. Rosaria Butterfield, who was saved out of a leftist, homosexual lifestyle, responds to some of Jen Hatmaker’s comments re homosexuality.

6 Surprising Characteristics of Biblical Faith According to Hebrews 11. It’s not the “leap in the dark” that we tend to think.

Shame, Sanctification, Singleness, and Marriage. HT to Challies.

The Humbled Mother.

In the aftermath of the election:

No, You Aren’t Moving to Canada. (We knew this young man, now a missionary, when he was a boy, near the same age as my oldest.)

Trump, Victory, and Where Evangelicals Go From Here.

Mike Rowe on Trump’s Victory (and why people shouldn’t ascribe all of his attributes to those who voted for him)

Happy Saturday!

Friday’s Fave Five

Posted on November 11, 2016 by Barbara Harper

It’s Friday, time to look back over the blessings of the week with Susanne at Living to Tell the Story and other friends.

This has been and up and down week, but so far it seems to be ending nicely. Here are some of the best parts:

1. Roses still in bloom. Most of our flowers are gone now, except for one planter of petunias and begonias out back, but our roses are still looking nice.

2. A calm, quiet, no obligation day after a very busy one. My mother-in-law’s regular bath aide is out with a knee injury, and the substitute aides vary in when they get here. So that put me little late going to the grocery store. I may have to plan my week to avoid needing to go out on bath days for a while. Anyway, the hospice chaplain came while I was out, and the hospice doctor, who comes about once every three months, came just after lunch, and the nurse came an hour later. And I usually do laundry on her bath days, so between all the people coming and everything else. I decided I may as well give up on trying to get anything else done that day. That was Election Day, and I was so glad I had voted early. My one consolation was that, with all the hospice people coming in one day and errands having been taken care of, the rest of the week should be a lot quieter. We stayed up late watching election results, and it was so nice on Wed. to have a peaceful, quiet day with nothing that “had” to be done (though of course there are always things that could be done). It was refreshing both to my body and my spirit.

3. The election is OVER. Whichever side you’re on, I’m glad it’s over for this year.

4. An extra hour Saturday night. I hate giving it back in the spring, but I love turning the clocks back in the fall. Except now it gets dark so much earlier.

5. A non-cooking weekend. Jim indulged my request for take-out Chinese food Saturday night, and my daughter-in-law made delicious hamburger pie for Sunday dinner. I hope you don’t mind me listing this kind of thing so often, but it’s always a favorite part of the week when it happens. 🙂

This is Veteran’s Day in the US, and I am so thankful for the men and women who protect, defend, and serve our country, as well as their families and the hardships they endure with their loved ones away.

Book Review: Long Way Gone

Posted on November 9, 2016 by Barbara Harper

I put Long Way Gone by Charles Martin on my TBR list after reading Susanne’s review of it, and when I needed a new audiobook, checked to see if Audible had it. They did! I usually put new books back behind some of the others already waiting, but I wanted to get to this one right away.

Cooper O’Connor’s father was a traveling preacher who mainly spoke at tent revivals in Colorado and surrounding areas. Cooper’s mother had died when he was very young. A large black man named Big Ivory (or Big Big when Cooper as a boy could not pronounce Ivory), recruited by Cooper’s father when Big Big got out of prison, rounded out their ensemble and played the piano.

Cooper proved to be quite gifted at playing the guitar and singing at a very young age. When he got into his teens, talent agents began to seek him out. His dad wasn’t opposed to his making a career out of music, but he wanted him to be able to be himself and not be taken advantage of by unscrupulous producers. But eventually Cooper began to feel his father was holding him back, so he took his father’s truck, guitar, and some money and drove to Nashville. There he fell on the hardest of times, until about five years later when he met a singer named Daley Cross and gave her one of his songs. Things were riding high for a while until a betrayal and an accident took nearly everything from him.

As you might have guessed, this is a modern-day retelling of the prodigal son story in the Bible. The scene where Cooper left his father was devastating, and it was heartbreaking to see all that he had to go through. But his father, always watching for him, always ready to forgive and receive him back, was such a tender picture of the heavenly Father.

Charles Martin definitely knows how to spin a story and pull on heartstrings. I enjoyed the story, his writing, musings here and there about life, faith, and music, and even a bit of hymn history.

We would differ on angelology – but I am not sure whether his use of angels in the story is from his belief system or just a part of the story to illustrate how people might “entertain angels unaware.”

This is a book I wish both of my parents were still alive to read. Of course, I wish they were still alive for a myriad other reasons, but what I mean is that they would have understood Cooper and his world quite well.

Narrator Adam Verner did a superb job narrating the audiobook version.

Overall, a beautiful, heart-touching story. If you read the book, be sure to read the author’s afterword as well.

Genre: Christian fiction
Potential objectionable elements: Bar scenes, drinking, 2 or 3 instances of a character almost saying a bad word, with enough of it that the word is obvious.
My rating: 9 out of 10

(Sharing with Semicolon‘s Saturday Review of Books and Literary Musing Monday, Carol‘s Books You Loved )

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Thoughts on the election

Posted on November 8, 2016 by Barbara Harper

Image courtesy of David Castillo Dominici at FreeDigitalPhotos.net

I don’t think I have said much, if anything, about this year’s presidential election. There have been too many voices carrying on ad nauseam about it, and I figure if I have been sick of it for weeks already, probably most of my readers have as well. Plus I don’t like stirring up controversy, and this election has been the most controversial in my memory.

But there are some things on my heart, and this is my outlet, so I am going to try to lay them out here. Who knows, I may get to the end and then delete it. But I want to take the swirl of different thoughts and try to set them out and examine them one by one.

Most of the blog and social media posts I have seen on election eve have been reminders that no matter who wins the election, God is in control. And that’s true.

The king’s heart is in the hand of the LORD, as the rivers of water: he turneth it whithersoever he will. Proverbs 21:1

For promotion cometh neither from the east, nor from the west, nor from the south. But God is the judge: he putteth down one, and setteth up another. Psalm 75:6-7

Let every soul be subject unto the higher powers. For there is no power but of God: the powers that be are ordained of God. Romans 13:1

Some take these truths to mean, “God’s in control so it doesn’t matter what I do or whether I do anything.” While there is a sense in which that’s true, God most often uses means (like prayer to accomplish His purpose or witnessing to bring the gospel to the lost). We can each only do in good conscience what we feel God wants us to do, but we should at least do that: pray about it and then act accordingly. I don’t think God ever intended for us to take no notice of what’s going on in the world and never participate in it because He is in control. Throughout the Bible He calls people to action even while asserting His sovereignty. Sometimes He works in spite of people or without people, but most often He seems to work through people.

I’ve even seen a few saying that since Christians are citizens of heaven and this world is not our home, we don’t even really need to participate in the election process. That, to me, falls in the category of being so “heavenly minded one is of no earthly good” and seems a slap in the face of myriads who fought and died for us to have this privilege. We have this incredible gift to have a legal say in our government, and I can’t understand not using it. I think the above truths apply here as well.

But most of the chatter I have seen has not been along the lines of opting out or disregarding the privilege to vote. It’s been more along the lines of the best way for Christians to use that vote, often fraught with deep disagreement.

My biggest problem with some of the political bantering on social media is the idea that if person A has a different view on things than person B, then B thinks there must be something defective with A’s understanding, reasoning, intelligence, motives, sanity, character, patriotism, Christianity, etc. It’s possible for good people to have very different views on what should be done and how and who should do them.

Almost every election, I’ve heard the phrase going around about choosing the lesser of two evils, meaning neither candidate is ideal. This is the first year I have heard Christians objecting to that. But no candidate is ever going to line up 100% politically and spiritually with how we think. No one like that would make it that far because that’s not how the majority of the country thinks any more. And we differ so much on some of the finer points, we wouldn’t all agree on a candidate like that anyway (that, in fact, is how I believe we ended up with the Republican candidate we have: most Christians I know were splintered between 3 or 4 of the other candidates in the primaries, dividing their votes and resulting in none of them winning). We can’t hold out for the ideal candidate: we have to choose between what we have, rather than wishing for what we don’t have.

There is such a deep divide over the issues and candidates, I fear that whoever wins, the other side will be discontent and continue to complain for months to come, if not until the next election. But once we’ve studied not only the candidates, but the platforms, and prayed, and before God in good conscience made the best choice we know how to make, we have to accept the results.

We need to remember, too, that no president operates in a vacuum. We do still have a voice: we need to be alert and use that voice to let our representatives know our views on issues.

And once it is all over, our response is to be:

Therefore I exhort first of all that supplications, prayers, intercessions, and giving of thanks be made for all men, for kings and all who are in authority, that we may lead a quiet and peaceable life in all godliness and reverence. For this is good and acceptable in the sight of God our Savior, who desires all men to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth. 1 Timothy 2:1-4 (NKJV)

Submit yourselves to every ordinance of man for the Lord’s sake: whether it be to the king, as supreme; Or unto governors, as unto them that are sent by him for the punishment of evildoers, and for the praise of them that do well. For so is the will of God, that with well doing ye may put to silence the ignorance of foolish men: As free, and not using your liberty for a cloke of maliciousness, but as the servants of God. Honour all men. Love the brotherhood. Fear God. Honour the king. 1 Peter 2:13-17

Those verses have all the more poignancy when we remember the kinds of rulers those writers were under.

In some ways, Christians tend to be more watchful and prayerful when their preferred candidate is not the elected one. Otherwise we tend to sit back and relax and trust everything will go well and forget about it all until the next election. But I do pray for God’s mercy in this, and, as a guest speaker prayed in church yesterday, ask that we’ll get the candidate God knows we need, not what we deserve.

And though I do believe the political process is important, and some are called to participate more than others, ultimately that’s not what helps people’s hearts or brings lasting change. Only the gospel can change hearts; only God and the Bible can change people’s thinking. Doing our part to be informed and vote is vital and necessary: doing our part to share the gospel and make disciples is even more so.

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Back to the Classics Challenge Wrap-Up

Posted on November 7, 2016 by Barbara Harper

I’ve read the following for the Back to the Classics challenge (titles link to my reviews) hosted by Books and Chocolate:

A 19th Century Classic – Our Mutual Friend by Charles Dickens. (Finished 2/22/16)
A 20th Century Classic – The Wind in the Willows by Kenneth Grahame (Finished 6/3/16)
A classic by a woman author. Little Town on the Prairie by Laura Ingalls Wilder, part of the Little House series. (Finished 2/15/2016)
A classic in translation (originally written in a language other than your own): Around the World in 80 Days by Jules Verne (French) (Finished 3/15/16)
A classic by a non-white author. Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass. (Finished 2/29/16)
An adventure classic – can be fiction or non-fiction. Robinson Crusoe by Daniel Defoe (Finished 4/29/16)
A fantasy, science fiction, or dystopian classic. The Sword in the Stone by T. H. White (Finished 3/24/16)
A classic detective novel. The Moonstone by Wilkie Collins (Finished 4/18/16)
A classic which includes the name of a place in the title. A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court by Mark Twain. (Finished 3/8/16)
A classic which has been banned or censored. Gulliver’s Travels by Jonathan Swift (Finished 6/23/16)
Re-read a classic you read in school (high school or college). The Old Man and the Sea by Ernest Hemingway. (Finished 3/26/16)
A volume of classic short stories. (One complete volume, at least 8 short stories, single or multiple authors). Great British Short Stories: A Vintage Collection of Classic Tales (Finished 7/5/18)

We’re allowed three children’s classics for this challenge, and I have two: The Wind in the Willows and Little Town on the Prairie. A few of the others later had children’s versions made of them and came to be thought of as children’s stories, but according to my research weren’t originally written as children’s stories.

Participants are eligible for prizes with a certain number of entries for books read. Since I read all twelve categories, I’m eligible for three entries. Yay!

I believe I listened to all of these via audiobook, but with some I got a free Kindle version because I wanted to read parts over.

I actually finished back in July: it helped that many of these were short, which I didn’t realize when I picked them. I could have read/listened to more and have accumulated more through sales, but I wanted to save them for next year’s challenge.

I’ve mentioned that I somehow missed being exposed to a lot of classics growing up, and I have made it a mission to seek them out and educate myself as an adult. Some of these I probably would not have chosen on my own, but I am thankful this challenge caused me to diversify my reading a bit. I enjoyed all of them in their own way, but probably the one I enjoyed most was Wind in the Willows.How did I get to be on the far side of 50 before reading that?!

Thanks, Karen, for the challenge! I am looking forward to next year!

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Laudable Linkage

Posted on November 5, 2016 by Barbara Harper

I found quite a bit of good reading the last couple of weeks. Hope something here piques your interest:

Grace Incognito. “What if the point isn’t sprinting across the finish line in record time, but knowing God in every halting, baby step along the way?”

Grace-paced Living in a Burnout Culture. The “Mrs. Grace” illustrations were probably the best I’ve seen showing what life lived with an overflow of God’s grace to us is looks like.

What Should Be One of My Chief Aims at Church?

3 Ways Understanding Jesus’s Cultural Context Helps Me.

Here’s How I’m Fighting the Lies of Self-pity.

19 Spurgeon Quotes for Coping With Stress and Anxiety.

When the Doctor Says to Terminate.

Children and Sleep-overs: What Parents Need to Know.

Master Your Time: 5 Daily Scheduling Methods to Bring More Focus to Your Day, HT to Challies.

The Things All Women Do That You Don’t Know About, HT to Lisa. Sad, but true. (Warning: a bit of bad language).

Here’s What Goodwill Actually Does With Your Donated Clothing.

5 Reasons You Need Fiction, HT to Lisa.

Did you know they were making a new live-action version of Beauty and the Beast? With Dan Stevens (Matthew on Downton Abbey) as the Beast? Here are some photos from it, HT to Carrie. This is one of my favorite fairy tales and the Disney film one of my favorite Disney movies. I hope they do this well and don’t toss in anything objectionable. Looks good so far.

And finally, my oldest son posted this video called “Unsatisfying,” and right at first I thought it was frustrating, but before long I was laughing. Some of the little touches, like the squeaky windmill, are great and the soundtrack, though I love the piece (Samuel Barber’s Adagio for Strings), is perfect.

Happy Saturday!

Friday’s Fave Five

Posted on November 4, 2016 by Barbara Harper

It’s Friday, time to look back over the blessings of the week with Susanne at Living to Tell the Story and other friends.

This week started out with a bang, but thankfully calmed down later in the week. Here are the highlights:

1. God’s protection. I wrote on Sunday about how a fire started in a neighbor’s yard (due to not completely putting out a leaf fire) and spread quickly because it has been so dry here. In this picture that my son took, our fence is on the left, and the fire went neatly around it, though it did warp it a bit and melt the edging Jim had placed for a planting area. All that black area is from the fire.

lawn-fire

Some of you remember our tree saga earlier in the year, when a row of 52 trees had to be cut down because they had caught a disease and were dying. They were right where the fence is now, so if they had been there, I am sure they would have caught fire and spread as well. We were thankful they were gone and no one was hurt and the damage wasn’t any worse.

2. Pizza and movie night with the family. We hadn’t done that in a while. We re-watched Finding Nemo.

3. Christmas cards. I wasn’t thinking about Christmas cards while shopping at W-Mart until I passed the Christmas aisles. I had a bit of time so I decided to look, and ended up buying all my Christmas cards. I’ve found that that is really the cheapest place to buy them, and do they have a section of inspirational ones. I’m particular about how mine are worded, so I like to shop for them before the selection is picked over. Now if I really wanted to get ahead of schedule, I’d start addressing them – but that’s not likely just yet. 🙂

4. A cheerful checker. At the same store, the sales clerk where I checked out was exceptionally cheerful and friendly, and it totally brightened my day. I’m not naturally like that, so I admire people who are, but it did convict me that a smile and bit of conversation and interest in others is better than being always caught up in my own thoughts.

5. Online shopping successes. I’m going to combine two in one here. 🙂 I had seen something on Pinterest that I was interested in getting Timothy for Christmas, but when I clicked through to the Etsy shop the item was from, it said they were all sold. I messaged the owner to see if there was any possibility she might be making more, and she told me she had one left and would be willing to sell it to me! Then I saw something else while out shopping and came home to compare prices and similar items online, and found it at Target. It was a little more there, but they had a 20% off code for kid’s toys and free shipping, which made it lower than anyone else had it. (No affiliate ads or links here – just sharing what I found.)

Bonus: Early voting. I had thought you could only vote early if there was some reason you couldn’t vote on election day. I was happy to be found wrong, and avoided the long lines by voting this week. Although I’m not always thrilled with the choice of candidates, I’m thankful for the privilege of voting and don’t take it lightly.

That’s our week – hope you had a good one, too, or at least can find some good in it. Happy Friday!

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“Edgy” Christian Fiction

Posted on November 2, 2016 by Barbara Harper

“Edgy” Christian fiction is becoming an increasingly hot topic among authors and readers. Those for it contend that stories need to be realistic for people living in the real world with bigger problems than the color of the church carpet. Opponents say that Christian fiction, of all places, should be a safe haven from objectionable elements in literature.

I think, as do many I know, that we should take our cues from this as well as every facet of life from the Bible. Yes, the Bible is different from a novel, but even in our novels we can operate within its parameters.

There are certainly edgy people in the Bible: harlots, polygamists, thieves, liars, evil kings, adulterers, murderers, zealots, and so on. And edgy situations abound: a man rapes his half-sister and in return is murdered by his brother; a man cuts up his murdered and abused concubine in pieces and sends her out to the various tribes of Israel to drum up support for revenge; a woman seduces a young, naive man; a king sees a woman bathing and takes her to himself though they are both married, then arranges to have her husband killed in battle; a woman has been married five times and is living with a sixth man.

But nowhere in the Bible are any of these situations written in a way to entice people to sinful thoughts in the reading of them. Profane men are shown to be such without spewing profanity. Sexual sin is portrayed in ways to show how it came about and how the people were tempted, but not in enough detail to cause arousal in the reader. Violent scenes are not written with gratuitous detail.

I’ve mentioned before that I grew up in an unsaved family with a father who used bad words (in three different languages! It was humiliating and embarrassing as a child when I said something at a Hispanic neighbor’s house only to find out it was an offensive word. Thankfully I don’t remember what it was.) So it doesn’t necessarily shock me when I hear people say those words. But when I read them, they float around in my head, and I don’t want them there.

Novels will by their nature share more descriptive detail than a Biblical narrative. Good authors know how to draw a reader into a scene and make them feel and experience what the characters do. But that is the very reason Christian authors need to be so careful with sexual or violent scenes. We need to take responsibility for the fact that we’re putting thoughts, images, and ideas in people’s minds and make sure they’re not the kind that lead the reader into a lustful or lurid state.

I don’t object to edgy people or situations in books, depending on how they are handled. I can understand a person is foul-mouthed without hearing the words. I can understand a person succumbing to sexual temptation without details of bodily form and feeling. I can appreciate a violent scene, such as a murder in a crime drama or a battle scene, without descriptors like eyes bugging out, blood spattering, etc.

In addition to how such scenes and people are described and what images those descriptions put in our heads, another factor is how the situation is treated in the novel. For instance, in searching for something in my blog recently I came across a forgotten book review for a story that included a suicide. That happens, so it’s not in itself an objectionable situation in a Christian book. But in this particular novel, it was treated as the only thing the character could do, and more than that, right and sacrificial and even heroic, when Biblically it is never regarded that way. “Thou shalt not kill” certainly applies to one’s own life as well as others. There is a difference between taking a bullet for someone and aiming that bullet at yourself. Suicide is the ultimate taking of your own life into your own hands and the ultimate lack of faith in God to handle one’s life circumstances as He sees fit. There were Bible people who wanted to die, but they left the actual process to the Lord. Suicide is a tragedy, and I can understand its happening in a story, but I think it’s wrong for a Christian book to condone it or present it as a good thing. Similarly, the tone, consequences, and character responses to profanity, sexual sin, and violence can convey that those things are not right without devolving into preachiness and judgmentalism.

I think it actually takes a great deal more talent to portray certain scenes without going into unnecessary specifics. One of the most violent scenes I ever witnessed on film just showed the victim’s feet, kicking at first and then lying still. No blood, no gore, but the effect was chilling. “Less is more” applies in a number of these areas.

I do want to encourage Christian authors that readers don’t want insipid, plain vanilla plots and we do want authentic, full-bodied, real characters and believable circumstances. I know it’s hard sometimes to know where the line is, but it’s possible to write great and realistic Christian fiction without crossing it. I know; I’ve read it. And I’d love to read more.

(Linking with Thought-provoking Thursday) and Literary Musing Monday)

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