1.) I have a few friends on campus who play Magic the Gathering. What are your views on the game, if you have watched it played/played it yourself or done any actual looking into it.
2.) Time Travel, just because its fun to discuss.
3.) Should Christians read fantasy novels? I mean things like Lord of the Rings, or books that have a setting in a made up world, with other beings or magic, or weird creatures that don't exist. Purely opinion...
2) Time travel? Oh, it's fun to think about, and movies and books involving time travel are usually fun to watch. Would I want to do any time traveling? Nope.
3) Fantasy books are great! Some of my favorite books of all time are fantasy. I love the "Chronicles of Narnia", "Lord of the Rings", the "Twilight" series, and the "Harry Potter" books (**bcpg ducks the rotten tomatoes that are thrown at her because of those last two choices**). As a kid, I loved "A Wrinkle in Time" and the other books in the series. I'm sure there are other fantasy books that I like too that I'm not thinking of right now. I like fantasy because I love to use my imagination, and fantasy books require that more than other books.
The "danger" with reading fantasy comes when someone is so absorbed in the fantasy world that they no longer separate reality from fantasy (or have difficulty doing so), and when they read secular fantasy that is full of satanic influences that they begin to dwell on.
I also think that some fantasy books are higher quality than others. For example, the "Lord of the Rings" books are VERY well known. They have some allegorical aspects, they are well-written, and they will continue to be read for generations to come. My sister has a habit of reading really cheap fantasy novels, most of which are not written by Christians. They have no redeeming qualities other than entertainment. She frequently finishes a book and tosses it in the trash or puts it in the GoodWill box, saying that there is too much bad language, inappropriate content, satanic content, etc. to make it worth reading a second time.
Do I believe that it's a sin to play a game of Magic or to read a fantasy novel? No. But do I believe that the vast majority of fantasy stuff or getting obsessed with fantasy card games is profitable? Not at all. Lord of the Rings has a lot of allegory in it, which makes it a great read, but so much more of the genre is full of sex and paganism that I can't see much value in it as a whole.
Question for CRead: you mentioned Time Travel...is that something specific (game, movie, book, etc.) that I've just never heard of, or were you speaking generally of time travel as in "time machine" sort of things? I assumed you mean time travel in general, but then noticed that capitalized the T's as if it was something specific.
1. Generally speaking, playing Magic: The Gathering on campus (the only place I've ever called a "campus" is a college campus) is a great way to NEVER GET LAID. "But," you'll say to me, "I'm a Christian! I am going to stay a virgin until I get married!" Playing card games that are predominant among prepubescent teenagers isn't any way to get married either.
It doesn't matter that it's fun. It doesn't matter that it's tactical. It doesn't matter that you've sunk 500 bucks into your deck over the course of the past decade. You gotta walk up to your chubby friends sitting around a table in a corner where they brazenly display their geekdom before the world that is shunning them and say, "Hey, I stammered something incomprehensible to Beth earlier, and she thought it was weird and revolting, but I sold my cards and am going to buy tickets to the game and invite her to come anyway. I won't be meeting with y'all anymore. cya!"
Look, if you like games, it's okay. I do too. I am always at war with what culture defines as manhood, but there's a balance. There's a scale. And certain things, fantasy card games being one of them, that ruin the scale utterly without further consideration.
Think of a job as a rock on one side of the scale and the xbox as a rock in the other. Magic: The Gathering is like a blob eating the country the scale is in and then imploding, spraying slime all over the earth. Quit playing it.
2. Time Travel. Time travel is awesome.
It makes for great jokes. It makes for fun discussion. It makes great stories.
If you make a time travel romance and incorporate a hunk like Hugh Jackman, it artificailly creates a heart seeking Cupid arrow that passes through any female defenses. Time travel is always awesome, as long as you're intelligent about it. Having an awesome bod, smoldering eyes and a funky accent helps too.
3. The Lord of the Rings was Tolkien's metaphor for the Bible. Make no mistake. Gandalf the Grey sinking into a fiery pit beneath the deepest depths of Middle Earth, essentially dying to defeat the Baalrog, and then rising from the depths, emerging as Gandalf the White, resurrected, to fight the final battle and defeat Sauron is not a coincidence.
Aslan, the Christlike character created by Tolkien's protoge, C.S. Lewis, author of such excellent books as Mere Christianity and The Screwtape letters, is not a representative of a mere fairytale religion. These books, these fantasy stories are designed to show real world consequences through wild and exciting worlds.
Unfortunately, a true fantasy geek is going to be aware of Dungeons and Dragons and Final Fantasy and other creations that turn the world of "fantasy" into a contrived place where there are always dragons and elves and mermaids and other creatures. There comes a point where these are not original ideas. They are not fictional creatures placed to create an insightful metaphor. They are simply premade tools that people use to express sickening violence.
If I have an army of minotaurs, murder 5000 mermaids while dragons breathe fire everywhere with axe wielding dwarves and ugly dwarf women mining or some other belligerent nonsense... I mean. It's just violence. Violence that is justified by the fact that these creatures aren't humans: It's alright because they're not real. haha.
Nah.
Bottom line: A. Fantasy can be used as a metaphor to shed new insight or better reveal important themes about important topics.
B. Fantasy can be dwarf on siren porn.
There's no real middle ground. There's no reason for middle ground. I think I've said enough, and have probably offended everybody here
Well you have not offended me. I think you made some good points, though they might not be popular. At any rate I always appreciate people who just come out and say it...that don't waste time sugar coating things. The truth frankly is sometimes a hard pill to swallow.
In an overly sensitive PC world it is refreshing, to me anyway, when someone is blunt and to the point.
I think a Christian should approach Magic: The Gathering and fantasy novels with their own convictions. Personally, I am not interested in either, but that's just me.
As for time travel, no problems there. We time travel all the time, just only in one direction: into the future. :laugh:
Fantasy card games have very little appeal to me personally, but I don't see any inherent harm in them as long as they don't become more than a hobby or pastime.
Fantasy novels are beneficial, in that they can subtly get a truth message across by changing the setting of "reality" into an imagined realm to be explored by the reader... thus getting the reader to explore some deeper meaning (if the novels are written with that intention). Again, helpful if they have meaning and unhelpful if it's sheer entertainment in which to get caught up.
Now, time travel... I'm going to go ahead and say it's impossible to travel anywhere but forward at the regulated speed which we are constantly traveling at. Why? Because if time travel were ever to be invented, surely it would have been invented ALREADY, as in, the future time travelers would likely have come back in time already. So, because they haven't (or it's an incredibly well guarded cover-up), I'm pretty sure they won't and that time travel will therefore never exist.
Plus, it doesn't seem to be consistent with the sovereignty of God's timing of when to place each of us in history. If he wanted us to be in a different time, we would have been born there and then, not here and now (or then; whenever you were born).
