A Tumult of Adventure: Weaving Wild Imaginations II

“There’s no question that stories for children form their moral imagination…children see in stories that we live in a world where what we do matters, and that there is real good and evil. And they know that. Children’s stories are simple, but they’re not naïve. They’re profoundly true…stories call out of us the best that God puts in us.

“This includes compassion. Because what is compassion? Compassion means to suffer with…you put yourself in their story—and that takes imagination. I have to imagine what it’s like to be you and to be in need. It draws out of me what is necessary to break out of self-consciousness and solipsistic pure interest only in myself in order to put myself in someone else’s shoes.

“So I think story or imagination is at the core of morality, the core of our moral natures. And of course that’s the ultimate story. That’s the greatest story ever told—that God had compassion for us. What did He do? He joined our story in a physical way. He started our story. He initiated it. But from the foundations he knew that at some point in history and in time He was going to radically join with His creation. And that’s called the incarnation.

“I think all great artists take good and evil seriously, even if they don’t know where it came from. And if they don’t take it seriously, then they’re not great artists. No great work of literature or art is produced by someone who doesn’t take evil and good seriously. So we can learn from those people who haven’t put it all together, who don’t know or haven’t accepted that God has incarnated Himself. God still made them, and God has given them at least limited insights into the human condition. So I love any story that brings out of me what God intended from me.”

--excerpted from an interview with Dan Taylor, Bethel University, in The Power of Words and the Wonder of God (recommended)

And as we develop discernment, a thought very worth adding here, from Doug Bond, author of many historical fiction books:

"Beware redemptive tales that turn us to ourselves and not to Jesus, that sacrifice Christ and the gospel on the altar of social justice metaphor. Weep, yes, "but drops of grief can never repay the debt of love I owe...""