Computer Theologian

[Jeff Gerke]

I read this article today and thought it would make for a great SF story:

www.livescience.com/technology/080128-electronic-mufti.html

In brief, it says some scientists are working on a computer program that can sift through the many Islamic writings and come up with some kind of rational synthesis and official, Koran-correct stance on sundry matters.

I had a similar idea when I wrote my second novel, Terminal Logic. The idea (which eventually did NOT make it into the book) was that the computer was given all the writings and teachings of the Bible and told to synthesize it all into a comprehensible and consistent theology. The program itself eventually became sentient and we wondered if somehow it had become the Holy Spirit.

Jeff

[Divides the Waters]

I read a book by John Milor that speculated that the Beast of Revelation might be an AI. That would work really well in tandem with your idea ... something that thought it was the Messiah, but (of course) wasn't.

[strangewind]

What I like about the Koran story is the Orwellian flavor - the computer "synthesizes" historic mufti writings, slowly over time "updating" religious practice. This inspires a faithful Muslim to revolt over what he sees as enforced heresy. As he gets deeper and deeper into his resistance, he has to become "more mufti than mufti" in order to wrest control back from those who control the computer.

In doing so, he finds himself having to become a biblical scholar in order to provide counter-data to the processor.

Which leads him to a "Martin Luther" moment regarding Grace and shari'a.

Then the real revolution begins.

[Jeff Gerke]

Awesome, strangewind.

And divides, you should really read Terminal Logic, as the characters make a similar assumption about the villain they find themselves up against this time around.

Jeff

[strangewind]

I don't normally deal with overt conversion in my stories, so this one would be a real challenge for me. On the one hand, a conversion experience can become a crutch for poor writing. A conversion is in and of itself, dramatic. It can sort of be like writing about a nuclear explosion: the event is, by definition, dramatic enough on its own. Everybody knows what a collosal thing it is, so a writer's cheat is to spend a page of text describing the explosion, when, in most cases writing the simple phrase:

"And then there was a nuclear explosion"

is evocative enough. We get the picture.

On the other hand, writing about a person's conversion from a strong, personal religious belief to a life-ruining faith in Jesus is dicey in the other direction. It takes a real gift to write about it in a real way. For example, in real-life, my conversion experience is most similar to only one other person I've ever met: a former Muslim. Both of us had very little witnessing or shepherding leading up to the life-transformation. God just came. He did what He does.

We converted.

But fictionalizing the conversion experience becomes a real craft unto itself.

Furthermore, it has to be critical to the plot, or it becomes backstory masquerading as foreground.

And, with this topic in particular, I think the author might want to be prepared for the Salman Rushdie effect.

[kouter]

Hey Stragewind,

Are you a former Muslim? If so I'd love to pm you with some questions. The novel I'm writing now deals alot with the varying views of religion. I'd love some more insight into Islam if you could provide. I'd love to hear your conversion story as well.

Thanks,

Kirk

[strangewind]

Sorry, Kirk, for the lack of clarity. I meant to say that I share a conversion experience that is similar only to one other person that I've personally met. THAT person is a former Muslim. The two of us talked about similarities about our upbringing: no substantive family knowledge of Christ, Christians or Christianity, beholden to a strong religious but anti-Christian stance.

We are two very different people, with different experience, but, before I met him, every Christian whose conversion story I had been told had a pretty substantial prelude (i.e. growing up respecting the Church, being discipled by a mentor, reading a book, reading the Bible, witnesses, life-changing experience...something. )

He spoke of going swimming one day at a swimming pool. He dove into the water a Muslim, and came up for air a follower of Christ's. He had no Christian friends. Had only seen a bible in a museum. His whole family and community was Muslim. It was as if God had set his heart right, almost on a whim.

As for me, I was just a run-of-the-mill God hater in a religious atheist/spiritist family. No Christian friends, no significant church outreach or influence. Not even a passing knowledge of the tenets of Christianity (only knowing it as anti-intellectual, oppressive and hateful.)

One day on my way past a library, God struck me with the sweetest command: to follow His Son. In the thirty seconds it took from my front door to the corner of the Library, my inner self died and I became His rough and bloody follower instead.

That's more biography than I intended, but I just wanted to be clear that I can't help you with your work on this issue. I can't even give you contact info for the man I met. It was at a prayer group about five years ago, and I only talked with him that one time. Although I've got a solid interest in a variety of man-fashioned religions, I can't give you first-hand experience on the tenets or pressures of them, unless you need something on ritualistic atheistic agnosticism (a term I just made up to describe, as close as I can, the church of my youth)!

Sorry to mislead. It was totally unintentional.

[Jeff Gerke]

Strangewind, you're exactly right that conversion scenes are hard to pull off in Christian fiction. They are among the hardest scenes in all of Christian fiction, actually. Of the scores of them I've seen, I've seen possibly only one or two done in a way that didn't make me puke.

Subtlety and believability are the keys, and those can be hard to come by. I recommend leaving them out, actually!

I've done one conversion scene in the third book of each of my two trilogies. These scenes are with characters who have been on their journey for all of two and at least part of a third book, so it was nothing sudden and we've seen these guys moving toward it for over 600 pages. I hope they're done well (I've had no one complain) but you can see how much of a lead-up I gave before I felt like I could pull them off.

Jeff

[strangewind]

Here's an idea I've never tried, but if the story calls for it, I might:

A character converts at some point in the book, but it isn't revealed to the reader until later, and maybe then only tangentially. The character will begin to bear fruit of the Spirit and so on, but the book ends before he ever makes a public declaration of faith.

I doubt I could pull even a sublte conversion like that off, but it might be fun to try. I've never dramatized real world conversion, in part because, in fiction, it more often than not is a bit too "on the nose." After all, one of the hallmarks of any good fiction is that a type of conversion will happen to every important character, certainly the main one. Purposeful change doesn't happen often in real life, but it is an expected outcome of good fiction. A "conversion scene" when not well-laid, can have the unintended effect of the author speaking the purpose of the book directly to the reader. Yucky.

In other words, Tom Joad, Lestat, Weston, Frankenstein's Monster, the "invisible" man, Frodo, Holden Caufield, Aeneas, Don Quixote and all other great figures in literature have a "conversion" experience throughout their respective stories. They change and grow, usually in surprising ways, becoming a different character by the end of their story than the one they were at its beginning.

A Christian conversion scene, then, turns a story into unintended metafiction. Poorly executed, the text says "witness now the transformation of this fictional character."

[Jeff Gerke]

It's a great challenge, strangewind, and I hope you take it up.

Characters' transformations, their inner journeys, are what great fiction is all about.

Incidentally, in the first conversion scene I wrote (in a novel called Fatal Defect) I did it right at the beginning of the book and then had the poor guy's life go all wrong immediately after. LOL. I wanted to avoid the Christian fiction cliche that when you come to Christ your life is suddenly happily ever after. I wanted to show a new Christian stumbling along trying to find his way and stop acting in the old ways.

Jeff

[rwley]

And you did it well. I've read that and I really enjoyed it.

[Jeff Gerke]

[blushes]