Interview Questions: Orthodox Theological Explorations in the Fictional Birth Pangs Series. Q8.

In the novel, you seem to be developing your own “pseudo-theology”, for lack of a better word: some type of Christian-based theology that certainly is fictitious, but is yet, well, orthodox.  Can you say more about this without giving away too much of the series’s secrets?

One of my underlying goals of writing the Birth Pangs series is to ‘re-imagine’ heaven.  The book of Revelation contains numerous images of heaven that I suspect would have resonated greatly with a first century Jew but bores our image rich, media saturated society.  It is to the point where I’ve heard people say that just about anything is preferable to heaven, even hell.  This is ignorance, but it is somewhat forgiveable.  The language in Revelation is symbolic:  whatever it symbolizes will be much greater than whatever we can imagine.  So, you might say that I have cautiously tried to insert some new symbols that I hope will resonate with a 21st century American (or Brit!).

This process of ‘re-imagining’ is not constrained to ‘heaven,’ though.  ‘Re-imagining’ is going on with the Nephilim and the Shadowmen, for example.  I wanted to take the concepts and doctrines that excite me and present them in a way that will excite and inspire others.   Basically, I get the idea that a lot of people think that Christianity is dull.  It isn’t so much that they find the evidence for it uncompelling as that even if it were true they wouldn’t be impressed. 

What they don’t realize is that Christian theology has been at the forefront of creative expression for centuries upon centuries.  Within the ‘confines’ of orthodoxy, there are numerous possibilities.  Just as having specific requirements for something to qualify as a haiku or a sonnet doesn’t constrain creativity, but frees it, so too does orthodoxy.

So yes, the Birth Pangs series is filled with fictitious explorations of orthodox Christian theology, but in theory, if my grasp of Christian theology is accurate (and Christian theology is true!) then everything that transpires in the Birth Pangs world could actually happen in our world.  And what a world it would be if they did!

I want my readers, especially those who are ‘turned off’ from Christianity, to consider that, and realize that perhaps God might have some surprises of his own- because whatever I imagine, what God actually does will blow it out of the water.