“Unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains alone; but if it dies, it bears much fruit.” – John 12:24
“The last enemy to be destroyed is death...Death is swallowed up in victory.” – 1 Corinthians 15:26, 54
"The greater the sin, the greater the mercy, the deeper the death and the brighter the rebirth.” - C. S. Lewis
"This story...has the very taste of primary truth." - J. R. R. Tolkien

Saturday, January 31, 2009

Made in the Author's Image

Before moving on to look at the Great Eucatastrophe, lets pause to see how eucatastrophes in stories that we tell point towards the knowledge of God’s Story and of the primary nature of good over evil that is written on our hearts.

God has given us, his children, the ability to tell stories that bear the mark of the Great Story, which alone is wholly true, and of which he is the Author. The Creator has given his image bearers the ability to imagine and design worlds of their own and thus imitate his great imagination and power to create, and in telling these stories and making these worlds we show ourselves to be made in the Author’s image. We are like God! Just as he acted in accordance with his nature when he created the great realm of reality, so it is our nature as children of God to create worlds and stories in our minds.

“The heart of Man is not compound of lies,
but draws some wisdom from the only Wise,
and still recalls him. Though now long estranged,
Man is not wholly lost nor wholly changed.
Disgraced he may be, yet is not dethroned,
and keeps the rags of lordship once he owned,
his world-dominion by creative act:
not his to worship the great Artefact,
Man, Sub-creator, the refracted light
through whom is splintered from a single White
to many hues, and endlessly combined
in living shapes that move from mind to mind.
Though all the crannies of the world we filled
with Elves and Goblins, though we dared to build
Gods and their houses out of dark and light,
and sowed the seed of dragons, ‘twas our right
(used or misused). The right has not decayed.
We make still by the law in which we’re made.
-J. R. R. Tolkien, “Mythopoeia”

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