Bringing Light, Casting Shadows: A Review of Lisa Grace’s Angel in the Shadows

Many friends and blog readers may be offended that I have read and am reviewing a book sometimes classified as “Christian Horror.” Calling it an oxymoron or worse, some people say horror has no place in Christianity.

What is appropriate to write and call Christian is a big area of disagreement. Workshops, seminars and conferences teach biblical standards. I have different beliefs and standards from Lisa Grace. Many people will reject this book without reading it because they don’t think they would agree with all it teaches. That would be a mistake.

Lisa Grace has said, “Nothing is more horrible than going to Hell and being without the love of your Creator. I find Christianity and horror extremely compatible for this reason. Why do people commit suicide? Because they lack hope and love.” Most of the modern definitions of horror don’t fit this book. There are no undead. There is no gruesome violence or dwelling on the occult. She deals with both good and bad spiritual power but in a pretty down-to-earth way, at the risk of resorting to a pun.

Seth, a character in the book, is a growing Christian, as any teenager might be. He joins the spiritual rollercoaster ride with his girlfriend Megan (the main character) and shows faith, patience and dependability not everyone would be able to manage. Seth learns that we can sometimes fight the good fight without wholly understanding it, and grow into better understanding of our spiritual battles along the way.

I found technical flaws in the book. The writing style is intended to be simple, to reach more readers, but I think a cleaner, more traditional attention to style and mechanics would not hurt its influence much. The handling of angels living among us and interacting with humans was also a bit clumsy at times. I am not sure their consistent physical presence, like Grace portrays, would really be compatible with an angel’s mission either to help man to good or to tempt man to evil.

People in the story say they don’t have enough knowledge of the Scriptures but little attention is given to more study. The book seems to portray some loose personal standards as compatible with Christianity. While we all come to the Cross with baggage, mental and physical, we need to learn what has to be left at the Cross or quickly discarded.

The book shows a sex and drug party. Little detail is given. The evil angel is active in temptations there. The lifestyle is shown as wrong, resulting in death and terrible consequences. Teenage sex is also there, without real detail, and it is shown to be wrong.

Adults, even Christian ones, are portrayed as weak and are disturbingly uninvolved in their children’s Christian lives. Megan’s mother automatically disbelieves her account of a lifesaving event. Parents and adults are purposefully excluded from the main spiritual warfare of the book. I did not care for this obliviousness, though I know it is sometimes true. We as writers are here to edify, not reinforce what may be true but we acknowledge is wrong. I object to running down parents and lifting up teenagers as superior beings.

This book has a FANTASTIC occurrence near the end drawn from real life experience. The book is worth reading just to see how God can work even in the most impossible circumstances and concerns an issue crucial to our times and our Christian and human natures. It is one of the best descriptions of characters and events I have ever read.

Angel in the Shadows, Book 1 (The Angel Series)

 

A Christian Continuum

The name or title “Q” is known to geeks and many others as the godlike creature in Star Trek the Next Generation. He was part of something called the “Q Continuum,” a race of fellow godlike beings who apparently liked being aloof and distant from mankind. This Q claimed he had benevolent feelings for humanity (include in this all the races of intelligent beings STNG insisted existed, please), and was just trying to figure man out. Usually, however, he did this by putting people in outrageous and impossible situations. He found out how to create these situations by asking questions about cultural ethics, values, and resolves, or at least those that the scriptwriters claimed man held. He would then reduce people to helplessness and cause them to fail. He was trying to help man, he insisted. He was trying to show the crew of the Enterprise how unprepared mankind was.

A conference of young evangelicals calling itself “Q,” hosted by Gabe Lyons, met in the middle of April of this year. Among other things the conference advocated providing contraceptives to singles in evangelical churches, as a ministry of the church. The name Q seems appropriate, given the repeated insistence by the group that they were caring and concerned, that they only wanted to help people, to get them prepared for the realities of life. I don’t know much about this Gabe Lyons or his organization, and I don’t know why he chose this name for it. It just seems ironically appropriate.

An excellent article in Christianity Today addresses these misguided people and their “Solution.” Matthew Lee Anderson points out that the conference advocated contraceptives because of the epidemic of abortions in evangelical churches. To those who protested that women who get pregnant should have their babies with the help of the church, they respond that no church member is going to be there with that mother when the baby starts to cry at 3 AM.

Please back up a step, Q, Gabe Lyons, and the rest of evangelical and many other kinds of Christianity. Maybe more than a step. You have given all mankind permission to fail. You have said that sin is inevitable. Single people are going to have sex. They are either going to use contraceptives or abort their babies. You have insisted the only way to stop this is with contraceptives. If we leave them alone with a crying baby at 3 AM what else will they be unable to stop themselves from doing?

Please explain to me why Jesus Christ bothered to die on the cross? I thought it was for sin. In fact, I’m sure it was. Even for the sin of being tempted to have sex while unmarried. He not only died for it, He provided the power to overcome it. If abstinence, true chastity and continence are jokes, then so is the Cross of Christ. The Cross, the sacrifice, the atonement, are all so much more than just Jesus “loving us.” Salvation is so much more than us “loving Jesus back.” The atonement is power, crackling supernatural energy to submit to God and do all kinds of amazing things that make sin anything but inevitable. Putting a condom in your pocket or a birth control pill in your mouth, as Anderson says, is admitting you’re going to fail. Wrapping the sheltering wings of Almighty God around you and strapping into place the armor of God is insisting that you’re going to succeed, not by your own power, but by tapping into the ultimate power source.

http://bit.ly/JmrZQG Christianity Today “Why Churches Shouldn’t Push Contraceptives to Their Singles.” Matthew Lee Anderson, posted 4/25/2012 10:46 AM

Gabe Lyons’ website http://bit.ly/JbfF8e

 

Planned Parenthood

Rush Limbaugh uses the term “seminar caller” for those who get together to plan how to attack his radio show. At one time Planned Parenthood had actual seminars on how to attack their opposition. These tactics have proved so successful that many others have adopted them.

About 1988 our family attended a pro-life rally under the Arch in St. Louis, MO, along with over 60,000 other people. John Ashcroft was governor at that time. Across the street, a few dozen pro-abortion protesters yelled and screamed. The news media, notably National Public Radio, pretended the pro-lifers did not exist. Very careful editing turned the pro-abortion protesters into “nearly two hundred.” This was my first experience with “planned parenthood tactics.”

To overcome some objections to an abortion, all women who came to Planned Parenthood were counseled to claim that they were raped. This lie also made it easier to tell more lies. The next tactic to use in overcoming opposition to abortion is for the “pro-choice” advocate to make an emotional, personal statement and attack the pro-life dissenter. When the pro-life advocate defends his or her position with facts, the abortion supporter must, as loudly as possible, claim to be a victim being attacked by the pro-lifer.

These tactics are simple, evil, and, in the political world, commonly used and highly effective. Because they are so effective an objective observer can see the method repeated in many issues. Tell whatever “white lie” makes the position acceptable to the largest audience. An emotional charge follows, the more inflammatory the better. Attack the opposition for presenting facts in his defense and claim to be a victim. Repeat until the person you are attacking is worn down and quits.