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livingfire
Member



Joined: 2007/4/28
Posts: 12
Silver Spring, Maryland

 Christian fiction

Francine Rivers writes (on her website):

["Are you going to be a “Christian writer” or a Christian who writes?
What’s the difference? A Christian who writes may weave Christian principles into the story, but the work can stand when those elements are removed. A Christian writer is called to present a story that is all about Jesus. The Lord is the foundation, the structure, and Scripture has everything to do with the creation and development of the characters in the story. Jesus is central to the theme. If you remove Jesus and Biblical principles from the novel, it collapses."]

Francine Rivers's trilogy "The Mark of the Lion" portrays Christians in First Century Rome as Christians were meant to be -- actually obeying God and following the truths Jesus left for all of us. A very encouraging and entertaining story that I would recommend to all who like fiction and who love God and honor those who actually do the will of God in action and sometimes to the death rather than just talk the talk. Francine Rivers is a Christian Writer, not just a Christian who writes.

One man who was both a Christian writer and a Christian who writes is George MacDonald (1828-1905). He is a man who understood that one walks with Christ, one lives for God and obeys God, and does not live life and the life more abundant through mere doctrines. George MacDonald once said that he would rather be with someone who walks in the light though he have the doctrines of demons than a man who can recite Scripture by heart but walks in the darkness.

George MacDonald's Christian novels, and there are many, are worth reading for the light that emanates from them and for the truth of authentic Christianity that plays out in the stories of men, women, and children who either live lives imbued with the Holy Spirit or who seek God as we often do or did, letting the self interfere at every step of the way.

There is much of the Christian life to be found in the fiction of George MacDonald. In my own Christian walk he has been and is still, stronger than ever, an inspiration and guide.


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Eugene

 2007/4/30 12:56Profile
lightwalker
Member



Joined: 2007/4/27
Posts: 52
Missouri

 Re: Christian fiction

George MacDonalds "Discovering the character of God" and "Knowing the heart of God" are the books that led me and mentored me when I came to the point that I knew that there must be something I was missing. I searched, and read and I could not find, till God sent me these books to read. I suppose that I spent five years reading and praying for light. I read the early church fathers and so many things and could not find "The missing link" Till I found these books. I would recommend them to all who feel"there must be something more".


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Melody

 2007/4/30 17:01Profile
HomeFree89
Member



Joined: 2007/1/21
Posts: 797
Indiana

 Re: Christian fiction

Quote:

There is much of the Christian life to be found in the fiction of George MacDonald. In my own Christian walk he has been and is still, stronger than ever, an inspiration and guide.



I'd be careful with his books, he was a universalist. I don't know were the quotes are right now, but in an article John Piper showed that he was a universalist.

Jordan


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Jordan

 2007/5/1 17:10Profile
BenBrockway
Member



Joined: 2006/5/31
Posts: 427


 Re:

Quote:

HomeFree89 wrote:
Quote:

There is much of the Christian life to be found in the fiction of George MacDonald. In my own Christian walk he has been and is still, stronger than ever, an inspiration and guide.



I'd be careful with his books, he was a universalist. I don't know were the quotes are right now, but in an article John Piper showed that he was a universalist.

Jordan



And John Piper is an extreme Calvinist who also is a little heavy on reformed theology. :-D

 2007/5/1 17:33Profile
HomeFree89
Member



Joined: 2007/1/21
Posts: 797
Indiana

 Re:

Ben,

I also started reading a biography about McDonald and it said that he was a universalist, so it's not just John Piper.


Obviously, we aren't going to agree with everyone on everything, I was just saying be careful.

Jordan


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Jordan

 2007/5/1 20:22Profile
ginnyrose
Member



Joined: 2004/7/7
Posts: 7534
Mississippi

 Re: Christian fiction

There are those people who discount the value of fiction. And if this is a matter of conscience, I suggest you listen to it. As for me, when I was a young girl I was heavily influenced by Bernard Palmers' Danny Orlis books. I also have heard of a person coming to the LORD by reading Grace Livingston Hill's books!

Presently, I no longer read fiction for lack of time because there are so many other works that beg to be read. But there should be great care exercised in the choice of fiction.

When my daughter was a teen I read some of the books she was bringing home. They were printed by Zondervan and when I was a teen, they published clean books. Well, I was shocked when I read these books and told her to quit, do not ever read any more from this series. (These books were love stories where the males treated the women roughly.....I told her a godly man will not treat a lady this way. Fortunately, she understood.)

My opinion....
ginnyrose


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Sandra Miller

 2007/5/2 9:08Profile
BenBrockway
Member



Joined: 2006/5/31
Posts: 427


 Re:

Quote:

HomeFree89 wrote:
Ben,

I also started reading a biography about McDonald and it said that he was a universalist, so it's not just John Piper.


Obviously, we aren't going to agree with everyone on everything, I was just saying be careful.

Jordan




I wasn't disagreeing that McDonald is a Universalist. I was simply stating who John Piper is. ;-)

 2007/5/2 13:53Profile
livingfire
Member



Joined: 2007/4/28
Posts: 12
Silver Spring, Maryland

 Re: George MacDonald's universalism

I am not a universalist and never was. What I like about George MacDonald is that he believed in utter surrender to God and complete obedience. His universalism was a result of his being raised in a Scotland that was at the time hyper-Calvinistic and all about Predestination of the "you can't do a thing about it but you are damned to hell no matter what" variety.

I can't stand the kind of universalism that is an excuse for debauchery and sin, and that is NOT the kind of universalism MacDonald preached.
Anyway, George MacDonald appeals to all Christians, liberals and conservatives, baby Christians and mature Christians.

It was his personal life, dedicated to actually living the spirit rather than the letter. If anything, MacDonald is harder, harsher on anyone who slacks off in their Christian walk. He is a man who gave it all to God. And he was one of the few who bemoaned the fact that the Victorians had feminized Christ, made a bearded lady out of Jesus Christ. He scorned the effeminization of Jesus as the meek and mild Breck girl of the modern world.


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Eugene

 2007/5/7 12:10Profile
PreachParsly
Member



Joined: 2005/1/14
Posts: 2164
Arkansas

 Re:

Quote:
I can't stand the kind of universalism that is an excuse for debauchery and sin, and that is NOT the kind of universalism MacDonald preached.



What kind of universalism is Biblical? Or what kind can you "stand?"

Maybe you are defining universalism differently than I do, but the Bible doesn't teach that everyone will be "saved."

EDIT: I do understand you are not a universalist, but I'm just wondering your thoughts.

Quote:
I am not a universalist and never was.


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Josh Parsley

 2007/5/7 12:18Profile
livingfire
Member



Joined: 2007/4/28
Posts: 12
Silver Spring, Maryland

 Re: universalism (scratches head)...what universalism?

Universalism is not biblical. This has always been a sticking point with me and George MacDonald. But, George MacDonald will tell you that not only do you have to be a slave of God but that you will pay to the last farthing for your sins. I conjecture that MacDonald and others like him were "reactionaries" to the doctrinal crunch that excluded so many people from coming to Christ by forcing the "doctrines of men" on people and by teaching nought but the letter of the law and not the spirit.

I am not defending, nor will ever defend universalism and I have the forum battle scars to prove it, scars gained from a George MacDonald forum I used to belong to, where I made a complete ass of myself many times over and where I spilled so much vitriol that you could have etched an entire new president on Mount Rushmore from the spittle I frothed forth.

I will say that God's ways are not our ways and that we do "see through a glass darkly," and therefore we are not apprised of all the facts of the here and now nor of the hereafter. The Bible, as an orthodox monk-theologian once said "is sufficient for all things." God gave us the Bible as a guide, a sufficient guide to live out our lives walking in the light. If the purpose of the Christian life is to walk in the light, then I will state, uncategorically, that the writings (the fiction and the unspoken sermons) of George MacDonald certainly and absolutely help me walk in the light, to see a bit more clearly through that dark glass, to understand what it truly is to be guided by the Holy Spirit in a completely experiential (physical/mental) way and to go farther on the straight and narrow path of killing the Self. As George MacDonald, throughout his writings, says, in so many words, the Church's man-made doctrines build up the Self, make us less than God wants us to be -- in effect, putting a damper on the Holy Spirit in our lives.

If William Law is, as I assume, one of George MacDonald's chief influences, then it cannot be that George MacDonald's universalism is that kind of universalism which is despicable, which is an excuse for sin, which is an excuse for not evangelizing, which is the road to death in death. I apologize for spewing forth such a large amount of bilgewater but I am sometimes aware that the time is short, that men's appetites are for the "old wine" rather than the New, and that I myself am so far from killing all that is in me of the flesh and the world and the devil that I realize...suddenly...that it is not "I" who can do a damn thing about all this but only God, through His Son, Jesus Christ and through the Holy Spirit.




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Eugene

 2007/5/7 13:04Profile





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