So, among the many books the boss has written. Her current favorite is the one she wrote in the thankless genre of Christian fantasy before I could stop her. And credit where it is due, it is one of her best sellers. That is an amazing and pleasant surprise to me, because Christian fantasy is one of those genres I cannot recommend writing in unless you cannot see yourself writing in anything else. Salutations, fellow readers, writers and killers of time on YouTube. My name is with the Jones and many years ago in Adelaide called England. A couple of groupy writer-guys wrote some books in the niche genre of Christian fantasy and accidentally changed pop culture forever. While these books are dearly loved by multiple generations of readers from many fates, they are far from universally lauded among Christians, because Christians are people, and people are natural born gatekeepers. You know how some folks evangelize Shakespeare because they love it and want everyone else to feel that love while other folks prefer to keep Shakespeare inclusive and boring? Well, that perceived exclusivity applies to all knowledge everywhere, from mathematics to music to chemistry to, you guessed it, theology. This is part of what makes Christian fantasy so hard to sell, because readers who don't have a good history with Christians won't necessarily give your books a shot. Meanwhile, many Christian readers will say that Middle-Earth and Narnia are satanic realms, because their authors describe them with the word magic, i.e., power that did not overtly come from God, and still others will say that the Bible is the only book we're reading. Therefore, after eight years of selling non-bible books in the Bible built, I have come to the conclusion that trying to appease that exact sect of Christian reader is only slightly less enjoyable than waiting tables in a carpet. Yet, despite the thanklessness of this genre and my own hideous track record at selling it, I encounter authors on a semi-regular basis who, like my publisher, have both a heart to write Christian fantasy and an audience who wants to read it. So, for anyone who is currently on the fence about whether non-bible books are worth reading, I would like to use the Androgynous sounds of my voice to share with you a few, it's about. Why is Christian fantasy? Though the father of Christian fantasy is largely seen today as J.R.R. Tolkien, I would argue that the origins of the genre go back at least as far back as John Bunyan and Pilgrim to progress. And if you're already familiar with these two authors, you will know that they would be mad AF if they heard me saying their names in the same sense together. See, John Bunyan was a Puritan, which broadly speaking means he would have been prone to the hatred of fun, and to getting quite constipated about books that contain words like magic or wizard or dragon. But he did incorporate a fair amount of fantasy trephings like strongholds, gassels, and medieval weaponry into his extremely on-the-nose Christian allegory, the protagonist of which he cleverly named Christian. Hey, Tolkien, did you catch the subtle religious overtones did you, did you, huh? Yeah, I caught him. Conchages little devils. Tolkien, by contrast, was Catholic and not a fan of one-to-one equivalents for Bible themes, preferring to use a far greater degree of abstraction for Middle-Earth than, say, C.S. Lewis used in the Narnia series, or Bunyan used in his Christian pilgrimage, and to his credit, Tolkien's abstraction works to make his characters and ideas accessible on a lot of levels. Like, ask 12 different people what the one ring is, and you'll likely get 12 different answers. Is it sin, addiction, nuclear weapons, forbidden fruit? Well, yes and no. It's whatever you think it is, and what you think it is might change by the next time you read about it. I cover the biblical precedent for fiction of the teaching tool, Roundabouts, here, but past tense may actually do a pretty good job of that, and I can't be bothered to rerecord it. For the start of New Testament, there's this fellow that the Hebrews called the Eshuah, the Greeks told him something else, I'll probably have to look that up later. But at multiple points when he is more or less the main character of the story, he speaks to his followers in the fictional stories called Parables. When critics their actors said, why don't you just say what you mean? He says so that those who are given to understand will understand. In other words, Mr. Ferrisy, it's sir, if you do not understand or do not like something I have said, that's fine. Please consider that you might not be this author's target audience. And that really is the principal question, isn't it? Who is Christian Fantasy IV? Because tradwives everywhere can get uptight about non-biblical viz or magical that, but I don't know often it occurs to religious gatekeepers that the target audience for Christian Fantasy might not be your Bible trivia champions, or your sensitive parents trying to keep their kiddos from reading a book that has a swear in it. The target audience might be the folks who have heard the gospel more than once, and if yet to be convinced that it applies to them. And I do get it. It's hard for people who already love the Bible to imagine anyone not responding to it, but I'm pretty tight with some atheists who feel insulted when well-meaning churchgoers think that merely hearing the Jesus story, again, will be enough to change their minds. Alternatively, suppose someone has tried explaining God as a heavenly father to a person whose earthly father was abusive? Can you see that person responding well to being told your salvation depends on surrendering your soul to an occasionally vengeful patriarch? Or might that person be more open to persuasion if you approach them by saying, right, okay, picture God as a majestic lion with gentle voice. And like, no, that's not literally what he is, and any literalist who get hung up on the God is not a talking lion, how dare you use of it all, I'm sorry that metaphor triggers you. But I personally could accept that this might be what it felt like to see us Lewis when he was chatek with his deity. And I wouldn't dare drink. And you will die of sin? I won't. I'll find another stream. That is not a stream. I see. I have to trust you. Elsewhere in the discourse, author Jasmine Fisher said all of this way more intelligently than I just did in her article entitled Why I Write Christian Fiction, Specifically Fantasy. Quoth-sheet, most people have heard of Deja Vu, the new or strange appearing familiar, but few English speakers have likely heard of its opposite, Jame Vu, which refers to the familiar appearing strange or new. Christian fiction done well functions as literary Jame Vu, taking well studied and fatically underlined and dutifully highlighted truths and rendering them momentarily unfamiliar so that they can be contemplated and appreciated a new. Which wouldn't have to be a phenomenon unique to fantasy. Christian fiction has no shortage of dystopia, romance, science fiction, military, western, historical, and other fiction brands. So what is it about Christian fantasy that would make it so potentially subversive or effective in the eyes of Christians? Well, smarter folks than I am might have better found its suspicions, but I think it comes down to a matter of possibilities. By way of contrast, Christian dystopia like the left-fine series relies on near future interpretations of what has already been said in the book of the revelation. So not a lot of new ground broken there. The Christian romances or so-called bonnet rippers concern a common and well documented phenomenon called romance. Nothing an earthly about romance. And to be a lavable science fiction, military, western, and historical fiction all, debatably rely on a grounding in reality. But I think fantasy is perhaps the only genre that can come close to conveying the scale of the character of God as Christians understand him. Like tokens fantasy was grounded in history, okay, but there's no rule saying it has to be. Fantasy at large requires no regard for what is largely presumed possible. And according to the Apostle Matthew, all things are possible with God. So if you're a skeptic of this genre or a new writer who is just kind of getting your head around it, you may very well be asking, okay, smarty. Then where does the fiction writer go the line? And at what point does the fictionalization of people's sacred stuff become sacrilege? And do you I say? It's also super subjective. And like any other anywhere, you're not going to please everyone. But like any genre with Christian as a descriptor, I think it's a mistake to judge Christian fantasy as either a separate thing from regular fantasy or by the same metric of perceived truthiness often attributed to the Bible. Like anybody remember the holobelus surrounding the Da Vinci Code? When a whole lot of freaked out Christians tried to disprove the fiction of Dan Brown renowned fiction author. I hope it goes without saying that that was dumb and unnecessary. Because if your whole world view gets candid by a thriller with religious overtones, you're probably going to have some gullibility issues elsewhere. And either God is bigger than the bokeh man or he isn't. Contrary why is I don't know too many authors who would be okay getting told G. Elmer, you write pretty good for a Christian. Because authors should strive for excellence regardless of religious affiliations. Either the writing is good or it isn't. I've talked to some about J. R. R. Tolkien and John Bunnid who were lovely in their way. But apart from maybe Stephen King, very few writers generated more mean worthy writing related quotes in their lives than C. S. Lewis. And one of my favorites is, I am almost inclined to set it up as canon that a children's story which is enjoyed only by children is a bad children's story. And I gotta think that applies to Christian literature as well. Had Lewis or Tolkien written fancy books appealing solely to Christians, I don't think they would resonate on the global scale that they have. Instead they wrote stories about how it feels to be on a strange quest against overwhelming odds. Having impossible things expected of you. And having to put your faith in mysterious strangers. I know zero readers who cannot relate to characters in that situation. Whether or not any of those readers find lingering peace or deeper meaning after reading about those situations is not actually that big a deal. Because I also know of zero people whose faith has grown weaker as a result of being exposed to good fantasy not stronger. To defer to C. S. Lewis again, I never expected the real world to be like the fairy tales. I think I did expect school to be like the school stories. The fantasies did not deceive me. The school stories did. Since it is so likely that children will meet cruel enemies. Let them at least have heard of brave knights and heroic courage. Otherwise, you were making their destinies not brighter, but darker. As always, thank you for giving these videos a shot of the bosses watching. You're welcome, sorry. And I look forward to your proof and me wrong on this inability of all sorts of books in the years to come. To meet again, take it easy. Love you. Bye.