Promoting the Christian world view through fiction and cultural transformation
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Download the files here: (This one is more visually appealing) (This one is more suitable for printing) (Free for your E-reader) Read on Kindle: Click Here
A Sea of Troubles by P.G. Wodehouse is included in this edition to show that if one wants to use Story to promote, defend, and transmit the Christian faith, it does not need to always be somber and serious. If you believe that God made humans in His image, and you observe that humans enjoy humor and laughter, one may conclude that God enjoys humor and laughter as well.
Is Wodehouse a Christian? Does it matter? All good things come from God. There is no other source for good things. When we find something positively good somewhere, it comes from God, and God’s people can enjoy it and make free use of it.
In A Sea of Troubles, we find a story that probably doesn’t have a moral, but as Christians we can find interesting things to talk about anyway.
In the first place, we may talk about ‘humor’ itself.
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Nathaniel Hawthorne wrote his short story, The Birth Mark, in 1843. If one did not know this information, one might have guessed that the story was in fact written in more recent times, when the notion of the ‘mad scientist’ is well established in the public mind. It is forgotten that there is a reason for why that character type arose in the first place. The story features a scientist of the “latter part of the last century” which, we must conclude, is not the end of the 20th century, but the 18th century. It may surprise the reader that already at that time of Hawthorne’s writing, ‘natural philosophers’ (that is, scientists) believed that they were on the verge of discovering “the secret of creative force” and then be able to “make new worlds.”
This supreme confidence appears now to be very much like a drug that the intellectuals coming out of the Enlightenment era were addicted to. Having jettisoned God and all ancient superstition- and restraints- they proceeded with glee to pursue whatever enterprise they put their minds to in the name of ‘science.’
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Most people believe I am magic. That’s what it looks like to them at least. But to me it comes as natural as breathing, reading the wine.
I didn’t name it reading wine. Other men who saw what I do called it reading wine and the name stuck. I guess that’s how things go. I guess that’s how people try to grasp what they really don’t understand. They slap a label on it as if a name says it all. Never mind that most of our names are useless anyway. That’s how they think at least, you name something and you’ve got it figured out.
Like reading wine.
I just call it tasting. Then again, everyone calls it tasting, and everyone claims to do it. But I found out real early in life that no one can do what I do.
I can assure you that all I do is taste. I can’t read wine like I read a newspaper or you are reading these words. I simply let the wine dance across my palate and I can taste every drop of rain, every ray of sunshine, the tilt of the earth, the coolness of the air, even the dirt on the hands that picked the grape. It all jumps out on my tongue in an instant. I promise it’s nothing magical. All I do is taste.
By now you’ve probably figured out who I am, or rather, who I was. Leo the Amazing Wine Reader I was called. Without effort I became the world’s most renown food and wine critic.
The hardships of being Winnie, a seventeen year old social queen
My brother is like algebra and my parent’s rules; he just doesn’t make any sense. The other day, our parents forced me to invite him to go play mini golf on the island with MY friends, because “Eli really needs to work on a social life” and whatever, and he told me sorry but he couldn’t, he had promised to teach our sister Maeve her new piano song. And I said so what, and he said he couldn’t disappoint her.
The kid is seven years old, she shouldn’t even know what a piano is. But no, Eli needs an accompanist to play all his favorite songs. I guess I’m not good enough to be the pianist anymore. Anyway, Eli and Maeve spending time together is unhealthy for both of them; he’s lost whatever friends he used to have, and she’s showing the early signs of Eli-like weirdness. The other day, I told her to please, please, please tell our parents that it was her who left the milk out after breakfast, because I knew she wouldn’t get in as much trouble as I would, and she just looked at me and said:
“That would be ill advised, Winnie. You must take responsibility for your own actions.”
A regular little Yoda. She really is a cute kid. If only I had gotten to her first, she might have turned out all right.
PERMANENT HOUSEGUEST
Hound of Heaven, pursue my friend; lavishly lick her face.
Please make her giggle, restore her soul, and nuzzle her with grace
To cover wounds in blameless-bliss, beguiling puppy whines,
As balm to heal the ravages defined by Hell’s designs
FINISH READING
Tags: Francis Thompson, hound of heaven, permanent houseguest
After several years of being in orbit with each other, Athanatos Christian Ministries and Hieropraxis have recently committed to work together on several shared visions.
ACM’s Executive Director, Anthony Horvath, and Hieropraxis’ founder, Dr. Holly Ordway, first came to know each other at ACM’s first annual online apologetics conference, which focused on ‘literary apologetics.’ This April, the third conference will be held, and ‘literary apologetics’ will once again be the emphasis. Hieropraxis will be a sponsor of this conference and Dr. Ordway will be one of the presenters.
On top of that, ACM and Hieropraxis are going to be working together to develop a program for ACM’s online apologetics academy that incorporates their vision of educated and informed authors and apologists utilizing Story to promote, defend, and transmit the faith. Keep a watchful eye out… exciting developments are afoot!
by Dr. Holly Ordway
Why is apologetics, the defense of the Christian faith, important?
In one sense, Christianity needs no defense. God, who is Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, does not depend for His existence on our belief. However, many people who do not know the living God are separated from Him in part by intellectual obstacles. Removing those obstacles by showing that Christianity indeed makes sense on a rational level is an act of love and care for our neighbor. Defending the faith also builds up a strong foundation for believers. A securely built house has a solid, well-built foundation, so that the vagaries of wind and weather don’t damage it or cause distress to the inhabitants. It’s natural to have questions and doubts – think of the disciples, asking Jesus “increase our faith!” or the man who cries out “Lord, I believe: help my unbelief!” Apologetics helps strengthen the foundations by providing answers to questions and doubts, so that the Christian can grow stronger in his or her faith.
What about “literary apologetics”?
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By Anthony Horvath
Jonathan Swift famously said that you cannot reason a person out of a position that they did not reason themselves into. Naturally, few people will admit that they’ve come by some of their most cherished beliefs by feeling their way along, so pointing this out probably won’t help much.
Still, even if this is the case in many instances, it doesn’t necessarily follow that it is altogether wrong or bad that certain core values are absorbed rather than rationally derived. Probably, there are some important things that are not meant to regarded as mere abstractions. Indeed, I would contend that there are things that we treat as real, even if our beliefs about them regard them as fantasy or illusion or worse.
How could such a thing happen? How could people act as though something were true while simultaneously maintaining that it were false?
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Living Art or Dead Letters
This edition of the literary journal features the winning entries in ACM’s 2011 Christian writing contest (short story and poetry categories).
What makes an entry a winning entry?
ACM actually thinks about that quite a bit. Our internal discussions can be quite animated! At first blush, you would like to reward a story or poem with a prize based solely on objective criteria. Certainly there are a number of objective elements that you could look at: is there proper spelling throughout? Is the grammar correct throughout? Do the paragraphs have exactly four sentences, with one clearly identifiable as the topic sentence? Is the story interesting?
Wait a minute!
Objectivity will only take you so far. When one gets into the region of considering a story’s theme or plot elements or creativity, the subjective aspects of judging necessarily creep in. The word ‘creep’ suggests that subjectivity is a bad thing. Certainly, unbridled subjectivity in a contest would be a bad thing. However, what we must recognize is that the very nature of the thing in question requires some subjectivity, or else it isn’t art we are considering, but dead letters.
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Sponsors: Athanatos Christian Ministries. Christianwritingcontest.com. |
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Featured Authors and Organizations Myanmar Hope Christian Missions |
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Would you like to have your poem, short story, or artwork published in our literary magazine? Click here for information and to submit.