Fantasy Blog Tour—Christian Fiction Review, Day 5

First, a reminder that those of you posting comments Monday through today here at A Christian Worldview of Fiction are eligible for a drawing to win an autographed set of Bryan Davis’s Dragon in Our Midst books. You have until midnight, Pacific time to add your thoughts to our discussion about fantasy.

Also, if you haven’t spent much time reading Tim Frankovich’s reviews over at Christian Fiction Review’s Focus on Christian Fantasy, treat yourself this weekend and take time to peruse his work.

Special thanks to those who have participated in the blog tour. Be sure to drop by their sites (other free books are up for grabs and a fantasy poetry contest is underway, but you’ll need to do a little hunting to find the goods. 😉 )

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
Valerie’s In My Little World blog
Karen Hancock’s blog Writing from the Edge
Chris Well: Learning Curve blog

Recently I’ve been exploring magic. I concluded yesterday that supernatural beings have supernatural power. But that is only part of the truth. The Supreme Supernatural Being also has natural power.

Think about it. Who hung the stars in space? Who sees that it all continues to work? It’s not as if God established a set of natural laws that has gotten away from Him, that He no longer can control. Gravity exists because God created it and maintains it. As He did and does, photosynthesis. And the Pythagorean theorem, or the second law of thermodynamics. Or the law of sin and death.

OK, that last one is a spiritual law, but the point is, God rules it all, and in the ruling can suspend or countermand the rules. He can stop the sun for a day or even make it—or the earth—go backwards. He can raise the dead or come to earth as Incarnate God. He can walk on water. Change water to wine. Predict the presence of a coin in a fish’s mouth. Multiply chunks of bread. And forgive sinners. Nothing, nothing is beyond His power.

So how does this fit with magic? Because part of the inexplicable is that God has allowed His enemies some measure of power (magic), and He chooses to let evil ripen before He puts an eternal end to it.

Meanwhile, Mankind—he of such little power—longs for the day of triumph, or dreads the day of disaster, even as a war rages in his soul.

Fantasy shows the longing, the dreading, the raging, with the admission that the enemy does have power, just not omnipotence.

But there is another side of the magic question, a less serious one, that we’ll look at next time.