Fantasy Blog Tour—Christian Fiction Review, Day 3

I had been lamenting my organizational lapse. After all, when I first contacted Tim Frankovich to tell him my idea of highlighting Christian Fiction Review’s Focus on Christian Fantasy, I intended on sending him some questions and writing up an interview.

Never fear. Mike Duran already did that at his blog Decompose. This is an excellent interview and uncovered a few things I was wondering myself: what prompted Tim to focus on fantasy, how and why he started his review site, how many books he reviews per year, how he chooses them, what his rating system is, and many other great questions. It is a worthwhile, entertaining, informative interview. Highly recommend, to use his terminology.

Just a reminder, I will be drawing the name of one person who leaves a comment this week to be the winner of a Bryan Davis autographed set of the books in the best-selling Dragons in Our Midst series.

If you haven’t already stopped by one of the other blogs in the Fantasy Tour, I encourage you to do so. Participants include:

Mirtika Schultz’s Mirathon blog 
Insights from Beth Goddard
Jason Joyner’s Spoiled for the Ordinary
Marci’s Writer Lee blog
Sally Apokedak’s All About Children’s Books blog
Steve Trower’s Old Testament Space Opera blog
Cheryl Russell’s Unseen Worlds blog
LaShaunda’s See You On The Net blog
Shannon McNear’s Shenandoah’s Eclectic Musings
Meg Mosley’s Megawriter blog
Stuart Stockton’s The Jerkrenak’s Den
Sharon Hinck’s blog (Sharon Hinck of the soon-to-be-famous novel, The Secret Life of Becky Miller—no relation to moi.

By the way, I learned last evening that the Fantasy Blog Tour has been informally joined by Karen Hancock, author of the award winning fantasy novels in the Legend of the Guardian-King series. Tim has reviewed each book, all Christy Award winners: The Light of Eidon, The Shadow Within, and Shadow over Kiriath.

Last week I’d mentioned that I wanted to address the issue of magic as a stumbling block that discourages evangelicals from reading fantasy.

First, I have to ask myself, Is magic “real”? I mean, can people really perform magical acts?

If a person believes the Bible (and that is the defining point in discussing a Christian Worldview from my perspective), then the answer has to be, Yes.

Let me name three examples. First, in Egypt when Moses confronted Pharaoh with the first miraculous acts God empowered him with, “Pharaoh also called for the wise men and the sorcerers, and they also, the magicians of Egypt, did the same with their secret arts.” (Exodus 7:11 NASB)

In the next example, King Saul went to a woman who was a medium: “Conjure up for me, please, and bring up for me whom I shall name to you.” He named Samuel and she brought him up: “Then Samuel said to Saul, ‘Why have you disturbed me by bringing me up?'” (I Samuel 28:8, 15)

A third example is in the New Testament. “Now there was a certain man named Simon, who formerly was practicing magic in the city, and astonishing the people of Samaria, claiming to be someone great; and they all, from smallest to greatest, were giving attention to him, saying, ‘This man is what is called the Great Power of God.’ And they were giving him attention because he had for a long time astonished them with his magic arts.” ( Acts 8:9-11).

These examples seem to identify actual power, not fraud or deception. And there are others, powers demon possessed people had—the man who was so strong chains couldn’t hold him, the girl who foretold the future.

Magic, therefore, is real, but what, exactly is it?