Episode Details

96. While Celebrity Creators Rise and Fall, How Do We Best Respect Christian Authors?

Published 4 years, 5 months ago

Description

Even when you’re doing a smaller podcast, you get to meet some famous people. How much more so when you’re blessed to attend conferences and engage Christian creators via the interwebs. This brings many temptations—among them, the temptation of treating famous creators like angels, or like devils, when of course they are very much human. In the world of fandom by Christians and often for Christians, we’ll explore how we delight and discern famous creators.

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Concession stand

We’re exploring this now because of secular creators.
For example, Joss Whedon was last seen self-destructing.
We’ve also seen Christian authors speaking in strange ways.
We try to focus on ideas, yet we might name a person or two.
That’s okay. We have no personal grievance with anyone named.
This also means the biblical commands about reconciliation don’t apply.
All of the apostles were free in Christ to name false teachings and teachers.
Perhaps most seriously, anything we say here can and should apply to us!
God forbid that Lorehaven or Fantastical Truth fall into celebrity temptations.
Read our Lorehaven Sacred Scrolls Statement of Faith, recently upgraded.
To explore this topic, we might make comparisons to non-author figures.

1. ‘The author is an angel! Come let us adore him’?

Christians love supporting favorite authors, even to a fault.

We’ve probably all seen (or scoffed) at the “Beliebers” or other groupies.
But we’ve seen similar groupie behavior for Christian authors at conferences.
Often it’s the newer writers who want to catch wind from a pro author’s sails.

Many Christian communities mark happy exceptions.

Interestingly, at Realm Makers, everyone seems pretty chill and humble.
The best, most godly authors must steward their time, yet want to share it.
Frank Peretti would mingle. Folks respected space, yet loved meeting him.
(Laura McCary recruited him to help us film a fun video for Instagram!)
In Nashville, Stephen missed saying hi to Mike Nawrocki, yet knew that I could.
Of course, Lorehaven invites famous creators (including next month).

We might start making excuses for authors who wander.

Unfortunately people’s author adoration can also enable plain false teaching.
With secular authors, Christians generally know they may not believe Jesus.
But when Christian authors fall into false teaching, we may justify them.
This includes (but is not limited to) growing acceptance of Sexualityism.
Authors work in creative circles, which can carry unique temptations.
Authors want to engage their world, so they may repeat worldly notions.
This can include wandering from biblical belief, but also plain heresy.
Anyone in leadership, including authors, do bear this responsibility.
Authors aren’t