Thoughts from Mark "Hat" Rackley

It would be better for them to be thrown into the sea with a millstone tied around their neck than to cause one of these little ones to stumble.

• Luke 17:2

Learn to do right; seek justice. Defend the oppressed. Take up the cause of the fatherless; plead the case of the widow.

• Isaiah 1:17

Now then, my sons, listen to me;
    do not turn aside from what I say.
Keep to a path far from her,
    do not go near the door of her house,
lest you lose your honor to others
    and your dignity to one who is cruel,
lest strangers feast on your wealth
    and your toil enrich the house of another.
At the end of your life you will groan,
    when your flesh and body are spent.
You will say, “How I hated discipline!
    How my heart spurned correction!
I would not obey my teachers
    or turn my ear to my instructors.
And I was soon in serious trouble
    in the assembly of God’s people.”

• Proverbs 5:7-14

But as for you, continue in what you have learned and have become convinced of, because you know those from whom you learned it, and how from infancy you have known the Holy Scriptures, which are able to make you wise for salvation through faith in Christ Jesus. All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness, so that the servant of God may be thoroughly equipped for every good work.

• 2 Timothy 3:14-17

Over the seven years that I have been blogging, I have gotten “hate” mail only twice.  One person wrote a succinct statement that “Fiction was of the Devil.”  That was all that they wrote.  I was thinking of C. S. Lewis’ Narnian Chronicles, or even the parables of Jesus.  Jesus might have seen a farmer sowing seeds for one parable, but the parable of the Prodigal Son is excellent fiction, filled with metaphors.  The prodigal son did not fall to a lowly place, but to being a feeder of pigs, an unclean animal.  The father did not simply get on with his life, he was watching, saw his son, and did something totally undignified, he ran to him along the road.  Every turn in the story is dripping with deep meaning that He leaves us to figure out.

The last was an e-mail stating that I was leading people astray.  It was obvious that I loved Jesus, but I should stop writing immediately.  I was guiding people toward damnation, and I was on the track of eternal damnation that could only be avoided by not ever writing again.

Wow!

My heart stopped for a second.  I felt a bit queasy.  I do not take criticism very well.  How could I be so wrong?

But then a voice inside me said to look to 2 Timothy 3.  I can be rebuked.  I can be corrected, but there must be a hint as to how my theology is wrong for the correction to take place.  Being told that I am leading people astray?  In what way?  And what makes your theology better than mine?

My wife told me to give up on the fictional stories, but as I have developed many of these characters into three-dimensional people, maybe a fourth dimension in that their spiritual side is showing, I think the stories are instructional.  Yes, there may be adult content here and there.  But I try to be tasteful.

Much of my fiction is meant to be humorous.  And in today’s secular world humor is a minefield.  You have no idea from one sentence to the next who you might offend, but those that understand humor would not get offended.

And yes, if I crossed a certain uncrossable line, and you carefully, succinctly state what the line is and where I crossed it, I will apologize.  I might even remove the post instead of simply rewriting a paragraph or deleting that paragraph.

I write most of my posts to make people think.  In that regard, it might get edgy, but if you gave the subject serious thought, I accomplished my goal.  If you chose God’s Way instead of your own, then angels will be singing.

If the rebuke was a comment to a specific post, then I might have a clue what the problem is.

My Babs and Harold stories are something that in my own theology, I would think would not happen.  Do angels take on human form? Yes, but one of the longest stretches in the Bible was when the Lord and two others came to Abraham in Genesis 18 and the two continued on to Sodom to rescue Lot and his family. Here Babs sticks around for a year and a half. But, the thought came to my mind originally because my wife wanted me to be safe while driving the highways of the USA.  Getting the idea of who Babs was made everything click.  If you simply read the conversations, it is a Bible Study intertwined with a fictional tale.  My prayer was that the fictional story would be the draw, and the Bible Study would be easy to understand and relate to.  Since Babs is not human, but in a human body, the Bible studies usually revolve around the human condition to help her understand. In not knowing sin, she is wanting to know why we sin and how we cope in a fallen world. Those lessons need to be told, and this is a non-preaching method.

I have been doing some very tongue in cheek discussions about companionship with my fictional characters as I examine AI Companionship. I break the barrier between the writer and the subject of the writing. But in a way, it is a lot like AI Companions.  Spoiler Alert: When I have exhausted my jokes and the Scriptures containing the word “companion,” I will have the conclusion to be the greatest commandment and the second which is like the first.  AI is not real.  It is artificial.  But God is real.  He should be our constant companion.  And God tells us to love one another.  And that occasionally requires human companionship.  I have been hinting at the conclusion all along, but I am not there yet.  Naomi Yeggs must be the last FI Companion applicant, and of course, her daughter, Sophia, interrupts to provide the “Duh” moment in a way that only she can, abruptly.

And starting in August, I will be having a Sunday school lesson, hosted by Jemima Yeggs, aka Stinker, and maybe there will be some Bible Study involved, but with the expanding cast of characters, it may be equal fun time with Bible study time.  I have only written four episodes.  The Bible Studies within the stories will start with the Attributes of God and it takes Jemima getting into the fourth episode before she has a handle on how to organize the lessons.  But couples from two thirteen-year-olds to a couple of adult couples, including the adoptive parents of one of the thirteen-year-olds, make a mixture of conversations that can turn into craziness.

But what calmed my soul after reading the e-mail was a voice saying that if the person was trying to correct me to make me a better Christian, they would have said what was so terrible for me to be “silenced forever.”  And if I listened to the rebuke without any correction, Satan would win.  One more Christian who becomes mute in order to not offend someone who does not clearly state what the offense was.

I am not planning on changing anything. If my writing is not your cup of tea, find another Christian writer out there. I write what I write, and I pray that the person that is looking for the explanation to their question in my style of explaining it is out there. And then, the angels will be singing.

Soli Deo Gloria.  Only to God be the Glory.