I’ve been thinking about this a lot lately.
Every time I visit the Christian forum, I see two threads one on Christian lit—horror/thriller and another on Christian/fantasy.
Each time I scratch my head and wonder what horror, and Christian lit have in common. To me combining them makes a square circle—something that cannot be reconciled. I know what horror stories are, but deep down, I feel these are incompatible within the safety of Christ.
Of course, there are those who would say that Christian belief is fantasy, and perhaps a horror story in itself.
Perhaps I don’t understand the meaning of horror, as it is applied in the Christian context and as it is understood in this forum.
IMO the only book that comes close to approaching the concept of the above-mentioned genre is The Exorcist. The other books that followed are simple knockoffs. I don’t know, perhaps I’m making too much of this.
My father often spoke of a plotline he liked. He shared it with me in hopes I’d make something of it. The story involves a state-of-the-art listening post high in the Sierra Madre Mountains. For decades, the instruments have been picking up a signal that repeats itself every year, and on the same day. Astrophysicists, linguists, and astronomers, pour over the data, some growing weary over their inability to decipher what is clearly some sort of message, and some growing too old to care. Then bingo! One day Mr. Know-it-all computer spits out the message in every known written tongue.
Delirious with glee the scientists race to read their first glimpse of the unknown. They stand around in clusters. Tiny lights from Mr. Computer twinkle furiously in the room’s dim gloom. With raw copies in their trembling hands, the best and brightest of the nation begin to read aloud the message from the stars. And there went out a decree that a census of the whole world should be taken, and so Joseph went to the city of his birth to be counted, along with Mary his wife, who was with child…
Every time I visit the Christian forum, I see two threads one on Christian lit—horror/thriller and another on Christian/fantasy.
Each time I scratch my head and wonder what horror, and Christian lit have in common. To me combining them makes a square circle—something that cannot be reconciled. I know what horror stories are, but deep down, I feel these are incompatible within the safety of Christ.
Of course, there are those who would say that Christian belief is fantasy, and perhaps a horror story in itself.
Perhaps I don’t understand the meaning of horror, as it is applied in the Christian context and as it is understood in this forum.
IMO the only book that comes close to approaching the concept of the above-mentioned genre is The Exorcist. The other books that followed are simple knockoffs. I don’t know, perhaps I’m making too much of this.
My father often spoke of a plotline he liked. He shared it with me in hopes I’d make something of it. The story involves a state-of-the-art listening post high in the Sierra Madre Mountains. For decades, the instruments have been picking up a signal that repeats itself every year, and on the same day. Astrophysicists, linguists, and astronomers, pour over the data, some growing weary over their inability to decipher what is clearly some sort of message, and some growing too old to care. Then bingo! One day Mr. Know-it-all computer spits out the message in every known written tongue.
Delirious with glee the scientists race to read their first glimpse of the unknown. They stand around in clusters. Tiny lights from Mr. Computer twinkle furiously in the room’s dim gloom. With raw copies in their trembling hands, the best and brightest of the nation begin to read aloud the message from the stars. And there went out a decree that a census of the whole world should be taken, and so Joseph went to the city of his birth to be counted, along with Mary his wife, who was with child…
Deb, that's a winner!