So I’ve been thinking about religion and its come about in unexpected ways. In June, knowing my usual dip in book sales was on the way, I resigned myself to just doing the writing, not bothering with promotions, and making sure I got in the SPSFC (self-published science fiction competition). I prepared for the
I hear you on Christians taking things seriously and on the need for stories - I wrote "not the parables of Jesus" - as satirical take on the parables to help think outside the box but also use the power of story to convey ideas. Too often stories (especially Bible stories) are reduced to "what's the moral?" and miss the fact that experiencing the stories is part of the point...
Yes! The morals are sometimes inaccessible (or mangled) when we drag them screaming from stories. Any good story is just a story. The morals, lessons, etc, all grow organically as you read them.
I'm working with a deeply immoral character at the moment, who does bad things for good reasons, and there's a lot of slow-burn moral stuff there that just would not get picked up in an English class.
Religion, in its extreme form, always leads to oppression. For some reason, most people who take their holy book as the be all and end all of everything good, often don't study their history. I am aware of the fallings of my Christian Religion. I studied the crusades, the inquisition, the purges, the witch burnings, and vowed never to repeat them.
I try to never quote scripture when I talk to people about what they might have done wrong. I try to approach it from a purely spiritual view.
I try to keep in mind that they may not know that what they are doing has consequences.
And my fictional work is filled with deities that actually care for their followers and try to show how that looks.
In my current work, one goddess is complaining that her priests are distorting her teachings and won't listen to her, and that's why she needs champions to spread her words.
I hear you on Christians taking things seriously and on the need for stories - I wrote "not the parables of Jesus" - as satirical take on the parables to help think outside the box but also use the power of story to convey ideas. Too often stories (especially Bible stories) are reduced to "what's the moral?" and miss the fact that experiencing the stories is part of the point...
Yes! The morals are sometimes inaccessible (or mangled) when we drag them screaming from stories. Any good story is just a story. The morals, lessons, etc, all grow organically as you read them.
I'm working with a deeply immoral character at the moment, who does bad things for good reasons, and there's a lot of slow-burn moral stuff there that just would not get picked up in an English class.
Religion, in its extreme form, always leads to oppression. For some reason, most people who take their holy book as the be all and end all of everything good, often don't study their history. I am aware of the fallings of my Christian Religion. I studied the crusades, the inquisition, the purges, the witch burnings, and vowed never to repeat them.
I try to never quote scripture when I talk to people about what they might have done wrong. I try to approach it from a purely spiritual view.
I try to keep in mind that they may not know that what they are doing has consequences.
And my fictional work is filled with deities that actually care for their followers and try to show how that looks.
In my current work, one goddess is complaining that her priests are distorting her teachings and won't listen to her, and that's why she needs champions to spread her words.