Okay, I think we've established that what the Bible says is the best idea (
Imagine that!)
I think the larger question (rant's aside) is if we are writing for a CBA audience of Christians how do we do space opera? Can we do that in a way that will not drive the "people that are in the Churches" away without getting our main point?
If we're writing for the ABA secualr market I think we have more lattitude. Most secular Sf fans are kind of loosely wrapped, even to the science of this current world. We who are so called have the easier task, methinks.
But how do we handle this question if we write for the Christian market?
Let me propose some alternatives:
1. Pick one of the commonly held eschatalogical "timelines" (
) and try to fit our story into that set of "dates of expectation". One of the things I learned as a preacher is that if you want your message to go though to you hearers you personally need to be as "transparent" as possible. You need to fit into the crowd you're addressing, or at very least meet the expectations that crowd has for a "gospel preacher."
This would say that in writing for the church crowd you need to fit into their eschatalogical preconceptions, or they won't notice anything but that you don't fit. Not good if you have a message to deliver.
I'd say this is the easiest method if you are working against a deadline.
2. Put in backstory, "discoveries" or essential exigesis that tackles the inconsistencies and unbiblical holes in the common eschatologies and proposes a more biblically sound, less science fictiony, eschatology into which you can fit your story.
This would be harder, but I for one would applaud anyone who can crucify and bury that unscriptural escatology that was made almost universal by the "Left Behind" series.
It would take a lot more work in terms of Biblical exegesis, and the sheer writing craft to make it good enough to engage people despite the unfamiliar eschatology would have to be world class.
(thats what we're about baby) It would face much more inertia to overcome the current prejudices; but to the person called and gifted to do such a thing you would be reshaping the cultural landscape into a more biblical worldview.
But what if you don't want to be a meek little conformist to sell you r books, or clean out the Olympian stables of all the accumulated dead headed fecal matter of the biblically challenged?
3. A riskier approach presents itself to me. Follow my logic:
Most Sf readers are younger people, tweens, teens and twenty sometings. Generally once people get into the child bearing and raising years they don't have time for such
(our notable couterexamples are a few of our Anomaliens who not only read but write Sf while raising their children)
Many or our church young people are not following the faith of their fathers (or mothers) as witness the high percentage of the who are lost to the church as soon as they get out on their own, to college or working.
We could target this demographic within the "church" world as a sort of internal mission field. I suspect they would be less concerned about "correct" eschatology than they are about a good story.
In that case we'd have to walk a middle ground between creative eschatology and 'orthodoxy' but it does give us a wider field of inspiration than just writing another remake of "Left Behind." Umm . . . isn't that what we're doing now?
SGD
dave