Good News: Central Casting Has Chosen You



Francis Chan, a quite prominent preacher says Christian groups need to stop bad mouthing each other. He says he knows both Jesus and God want unity, not division. Satan, Chan says, is rejoicing about the divisions. Chan's version of reality is right out of a college course, Developing Fictional Plots 101.

Christianity is a story line that follows the classic pattern of story telling since forever. There is a hero and there is a villain. The struggle is epic. But, the hero wins. In western movies the hero rides off with the girl. In the Bible Jesus, the hero, wins by coming back to life.

I have attended a couple of play performances where the audience participates in the story. The actors remain in character while talking to the audience about solving the mystery.

Christianity is like that. There is a fictional story about heroes, God and Jesus, and a villain, Satan. The hero wins. Audience members are invited into the story. They, too, can defeat the villain by worshiping the proper god and live forever in the luxury of heaven. The stories of our lives have happy endings, our good prevails over the evil of others. In the battle against atheists, Christians will win.

Pretending we are in an actual battle of good versus evil and believers are on the winning side is a clever idea. That it is all fictional is unimportant to those who are made happy by the ruse.

All of us have ancestors going way back to ancient times. Our ancestors believed in other gods, Christianity had not yet been invented. We can be certain the gods our ancestors believed in were heroes and vanquished whatever the fictional villain of the time was back then.

Religion has always had, and always will have, traditional plots in its story lines.


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