Wednesday, August 29, 2012

Lit!: A Christian Guide to Reading Books, by Tony Reinke

****

An excerpt of a review posted on Schaeffer's Ghost:
First of all, fiction is uniquely creative in a way that non-fiction simply is not. A good fiction writer does not just tell a story; he (or she) creates a world. When we engage in this activity of world-building, we reflect the image of God, who created our world. He made it up out of his own head (so to speak) and brought it into existence. [...] Even though they can never be ‘real’, these imagined worlds can sometimes have a greater effect on individuals than the ‘real’ world because they work from the inside out. They are directly implanted from the mind of the writer into the mind of the reader or viewer, and it is from there that any real-world effects emanate. Thus, by writing fiction we have an opportunity to share—albeit in a very small way—in the creative work of our Creator God. By writing fiction, we can (dimly) reflect the image of our imaginative God, and by reading fiction, we can appreciate this God-like quality in others.
Full review available here.

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