Monday 6 January 2003

Pic of the day: Somehow I don't mind much when I see afterdeath themes in fantasy games or stories. (Screenshot from Dark Age of Camelot.)

Fantasy and blasphemy

You have to wonder sometimes. Sometimes I think it would be better to not have to wonder. But then we would be very limited.

I have been re-creating a highly fictive story which I began long long ago, before the coming of the Internet to these shores, or just around that time. I am pretty sure I wrote the first chapter, perhaps two, on the YouthNet BBS network in Norway. It was almost certainly in Nynorsk (New Norwegian), my mother tongue. I remember that the story came from a weird dream I had, and rather sinister it was too. It did not come very far, and this it hasn't done this time either. The concept itself is kinda creepy, at least for us Christians.

Basically in this story, there are some people who are kinda like angels. They are not angels in a spiritual sense, beings from the spiritual world of Heaven. Rather they are people, physical people, but with access to a technology that is hard to distinguish from magic sometimes. An alien technology that makes it possible to store the mind and memories and restore them to a new body, essentially making these people immortal. There are other benefits too. But these people are not lounging about and enjoying life. They have a quest, an enormous task that spans uncountable parallel worlds, and of which each of them only know very little. Still, they believe themselves to be on the side of the angels ...

***

"But they which shall be accounted worthy to obtain that world, and the resurrection from the dead, neither marry, nor are given in marriage: Neither can they die any more: for they are equal unto the angels; and are the children of God, being the children of the resurrection."
(Gospel according to Luke, chapter 20, verses 35-36.)

These words are part of my own religion, and indeed it is my main purpose in life, to attain the resurrection from the dead. Or in a more immediate perspective, to gain an inner life that would fit into that world. That is certainly not an obvious thing. I mean, what help is being raised to a life under God if you don't agree with God? And if you don't, how much are you willing to change your own view in order to fit into the Kingdom of Heaven?

Given how central this is to us Christians, I am very divided inside when it comes to writing fiction about it. Of course, this is a work of fiction; it is not really meant to be the real thing, just a passing semblance. Even so ...

Then again, people write a lot of books, comics and even movies that take place in New York. When we read or watch the stuff, we know that it is not the real thing even if it takes place in a real city. When we find out that the story isn't true, it does not shake our belief in the existence of New York, nor does it overmuch influence our general opinion of that place. Why would this be different? Unless we already are so very much on the brink that even the lightest touch could topple us into perdition. Then again, doing that would be a very, very bad thing, even if not on purpose.

***

I'd really like to read that story, and the only way to do that is probably to write it. But writing is a very immersive thing. You kinda have to suspend your own disbelief first, in order to write. And there are some disbeliefs (and beliefs) that you really don't want to suspend. Especially when you feel the shortness of life so acutely.

It is so much easier to use Greek and Norse mythology. But they don't really stand up to such a monumental vision. They died too early, back when the universe mainly consisted of your country and its nearest neighbors, and even these half shrouded in myth. Christianity is alive at a time when we face a cosmos with billions of galaxies, each with billions of stars, stretching over billions of years, and the likelihood that this universe may have many more dimensions than we see, and even so may be only one of countless universes forever beyond our knowledge. Christianity is current, it is up to date. (Your opinion may vary, but not if you read some of the modern apologetics. Al Schroeder of Nova Notes is kinda a specialist on this stuff, so I won't repeat it all here.)

At least I am not making this so realistic that reasonably sane people would believe it, the way some Christian writers do. (The "Left Behind" series comes painfully to mind.) I'll try to not implicate actual spiritual beings, I think. And of course, it is not as if I'll finish this ... I never do. Probably won't even get very far. But it has at least been a bit on my mind today. And this diary is not all about my body (which, I am happy to say, is still here). It is about what's on my mind, too.