Predestination, timetravel, and werewolves

[Kessie]

Okay, so I have this story idea that's gnawing at me.

You know how a lot of Christian fiction ends with the main character getting saved? Well, this story starts a few months after this young couple has accepted Christ. They're attending a church that is on fire for the Lord, and they love their pastor and are just trying to figure out doctrine and the basics of the faith.

The only thing is, this young couple has a few secrets. The guy is a time mage (chronomancer), with a magical injury--he's also, more or less, a werewolf, his transformation triggered whenever he uses his time magic. His wife is a gravity mage.

Naturally, they keep this to themselves, especially once they work through the Bible and see how magic is diametrically opposed to everything it teaches. They are very troubled by it, though, and debate abandoning their magic, even though it's part of them.

Then the time mage gets into an argument with his pastor about predestination vs. free will. Of course, predestination makes perfect sense from a chronomancer's point of view, because he deals with six or seven dimensions all the time and knows all about probable futures. But the pastor, not being steeped in magic culture, argues that there are some people who can't be saved (going Calvinist, here).

So the chronomancer takes him on a trip through time. Of course they screw up the timeline somehow, and adventures ensue. Over the course of the story, the time mage discovers that his awful werewolf problem was actually a good thing, because without it, his life would have gone down other, dreadful paths.

I doubt any publisher would touch it with a ten foot pole, but the idea amuses me. What do you guys think? (I'll definitely be brushing up on my theology, heh).

[fluke]

I know a short story zine (TC2) that would love to get its hand on it!

[Kessie]

How short a story are we talking? I don't think I could cram this into, say, 800 words. I'm actually thinking novel-length. My werewolf-mage, Indal, likes to talk a lot. :-)

Also, what is TC2?

[fluke]

TC2 is the Cross and the Cosmos, a zine that Christian Soldier and I do. We have quarterly issues and an annual anthology. You can find it by clicking here. Submission rules are there. We don't have a hard limit on words in a story, and some stories are multi parts. I'd say beyond 8,000 words would be serialized (though if it were like 8,500, we'd just go a little over). I've got a novella that will have to be split if it goes into future TC2 issues.

This story would also be a great place to have someone who holds to the "open view of God." That's an extremely untenable position that God actually doesn't know the future. It's the opposite of hyper-Calvinism. Arminianism fits snugly in between and hits the happy middle.

[torainfor]

I think it would be interesting as an exercise to show that no matter what we do--even if we get the chance to try several different options (thanks to time travel)--we cannot save people. We can work good, but we can't save.

[Kessie]

This story would also be a great place to have someone who holds to the "open view of God." That's an extremely untenable position that God actually doesn't know the future. It's the opposite of hyper-Calvinism. Arminianism fits snugly in between and hits the happy middle.

I'll be doing some research on all these before I write anything, so thanks for the suggestions. Also I'm going to take a spin around the Cross and the Cosmos to see what they have. It looks great. :-)

I'm dealing with time travel and multiple futures as explained in this video, Imagining the Tenth Dimension: www.youtube.com/watch?v=JkxieS-6WuA

Not that I completely understand it once he gets out to about six dimensions, but hey.

[yoda47]

Sounds interesting to me too. (predest. vs. freewill especially)

The nice thing about this day and age is you can always self-publish, so people will still be able to read it.

I was at a homeschooling conference last year, and one of the workshops was on writing. (it wasn't exactly what I was expecting, but anyway...) One thing I did get from that though, is if you really want to write for God, you've got to give it to him, and be okay with the idea that your writing might never sell, and might only get read by one person; but we should be fine with that, if that's how God wants to us it. So I don't care so much about getting published anymore. I still want to, but the focus is now more than ever on letting God use my writing.

I hope that rambling helps... write it anyway.

[Kessie]

is if you really want to write for God, you've got to give it to him, and be okay with the idea that your writing might never sell, and might only get read by one person; but we should be fine with that, if that's how God wants to us it.

Good advice! Coming from a background of fanfiction, where my writing was not only unpublishable but probably illegal, I don't have much problem with being "unpublished". I can always dump it up on my website.

I just worry about someone else ripping it off and getting it published under their name. I've seen that happen to many, many people on blogs, who have their sewing patterns and whathaveyou ripped off and published/copyrighted by some other person.

[yoda47]

Yeah, people stealing stuff stinks. Sadly, that's even happening to big-name authors these days. (they've just got more exposure so it's harder to do.)

From what I've researched, the best way to prevent this is to:

a. Not show it to anybody until it's ready to be published. (With varying degrees of paranoia )

b. Publish through something like Create Space, or some sort of publisher that gives you an ISBN as part of the package.

Under U.S. copyright law, anything we right is automatically copyrighted the moment you jot it down... but proving it can be a pain. If no one sees it until AFTER you get an ISBN, that gives you solid evidence.

If someone rips you off after that, you have the choice of suing them or shrugging and saying, "Hey, at least people are seeing it. Perhaps God will use it to get them saved or something."

[Kessie]

Yeah, didn't even Stephanie Meyer get ripped off? She had, like, a fifth Twilight book that she sent out to some friends for previewing, and one of them ran and published it under their own name. Or copyrighted it or something. Anyway, all the fans were extremely upset because they don't get to read it now.

Not that I'm much of a fan, but I feel her pain.

My biggest worry is losing my characters to someone else. They're like my kids, and it'd be like having them be kidnapped forever.

[Bainespal]

Well, this is a fascinating and ambitious concept, for sure! The heaviness of the intellectual problems encountered in the story will probably be both its strength and its weakness. I would advise against making the "predestination vs. freewill" debate simply a matter of intellectual interest to the characters while they go through a plot consisting of more tangible dangers. Make them agonize in their hearts over this; somehow connect it to their fate in the story and make the readers connect it to their own ultimate fate. Also, I would advise against having an easy answer to the deep questions; I think it would be bad if any readers thought, "Oh, the author's just a (Calvinist/Arminian/whatever)."

It's a worthy and exciting concept!

[Kessie]

would advise against making the "predestination vs. freewill" debate simply a matter of intellectual interest to the characters while they go through a plot consisting of more tangible dangers. Make them agonize in their hearts over this; somehow connect it to their fate in the story and make the readers connect it to their own ultimate fate.

Well, yeah, that's the whole premise of the story. If the time mage was 'predestined' to be saved, then why is there a possible future in which he was not saved? And why did his salvation only come by the probability in which he was turned into a werewolf?

And of course something in this chain of events would screw something up (I'd love for him to fix the werewolf problem and then realize that he's just damned himself).

Wibbly-wobbly timey-wimey stuff. :-)

[Bainespal]

Sept 28, 2011 15:38:20 GMT -5 Kessie said:

If the time mage was 'predestined' to be saved, then why is there a possible future in which he was not saved? And why did his salvation only come by the probability in which he was turned into a werewolf?

This opens a huge, terrifying can of worms. If there's an alternate timeline in which someone saved in this one is unsaved, then how can that person say that the timeline in which he is saved is the "real" timeline? Is God the same in all timelines? If so, why would He allow someone who trusts in Him in one timeline to fall away and perish in another? If not, then free will (and all of true Christianity) seems to have gone out the window -- the protagonist was randomly born into a timeline where he ultimately goes to heaven, while untold other versions of himself go to hell. Which timeline does God consider to be the "real" one?

(I'd love for him to fix the werewolf problem and then realize that he's just damned himself).

Such a plot device would terrify me indeed. I've always been afraid of hell, of losing my salvation, and that's partly why I like my timelines nice and straight in fiction. Ever since an atheist told me that everything possible really does randomly exist in some parallel universe or another, I've had a phobia of anything resembling a multiverse.

Sorry to burden your thread with this. I hope it's a helpful consideration and doesn't discourage you from your idea, which really is a brilliant concept. I just bring it up because it's a real problem that I have, even though it's so abstract.

[Kessie]

If there's an alternate timeline in which someone saved in this one is unsaved, then how can that person say that the timeline in which he is saved is the "real" timeline? Is God the same in all timelines? If so, why would He allow someone who trusts in Him in one timeline to fall away and perish in another?

That's the sort of thing I'd love to tackle. See, it's not so much alternate universes as it is possible ones. And the character's salvation was entirely dependent on his personal choice. He's just getting to see what would have happened had he chosen differently.

I'm thinking that in the "unsaved" possible futures, he does see that he might get saved later in his life, but in the meantime, he's done himself enormous damage with wild living, and the woman he's married to in his real timeline has gone off and married someone else. Like in It's a Wonderful Life.

The point being that God is outside of time, and he sees ALL the possible timelines, all the possible outcomes, resulting from every single choice we make. And since He's outside of time, he already sees the path we will take, even though we're stuck inside of time and muddling our way along as best as we can. That's the whole "predestination" thing.

Another thing I was thinking was that time mages live in mortal fear of the Creator, even if they don't know him personally, because He's constantly interfering in the timelines and possible futures. And when you can see an all-powerful alien being meddling with your time spells, it scares the pants off you. So it's been such a relief for this particular time mage to know Christ, and know that this Creator is Good, and to know His name.

Ever since an atheist told me that everything possible really does randomly exist in some parallel universe or another, I've had a phobia of anything resembling a multiverse.

I think multiple universes in reality are unbiblical, if we're talking about, say, a world where your evil twin lives. But in fiction, why not? It's fun to go nuts.

[firestorm78583]

Here's a thought. If you are dealing with tampering in time and affecting a character's salvation, you could affect others as well.

Remember that we have varying degrees of influence. We are either planters, waterers, or reapers. If you stop someone from becoming saved, then whoever that person would encounter later would be affected. The person who was stopped should have been a witness for someone else, and so on, thereby creating a whole chain of people affected by this one person.