Touchy Topic: Deities
(If you missed last week’s post, you might be wondering, “Why the weird title?” Today’s post is the first in a series I’m calling Touchy Topics, and if you want to read more about why I’ve decided to launch this series, here’s the introductory post. Without further ado, enjoy the first of many topics to come.)
An issue that comes up within worldbuilding, especially for Christians, is what to write about the existence of God, religious practices, and the effects of magic and fantastic elements on society. Should the setting accurately represent the author’s own worldview? Should the story allegorize certain truths, bridging reality and fantasy with believable stand-ins? Or is it ok to create outside a Judeo-Christian model, especially within the fantasy genre?
When I consider this topic, several verses come to mind. Psalm 82 rebukes corrupt judges who oppress the helpless in their communities. Verse 6, God speaking: “I said, You are gods, sons of the Most High, all of you; nevertheless, like men you shall die”. By which God is signifying that these men have so much authority over people’s lives, they literally hold life and death in their hands as though they were gods, and He’s going to pass judgment over them for being corrupt judges. Jesus quotes this Psalm in John 10 to rebuke people who got angry when He claimed to be the Son of God. Jesus made the argument that even their law called someone ‘gods’ when they possessed authority, so why could He not claim to be the ‘Son of God’ after proving He possessed divine authority to heal?
The Bible also contains passages about heavenly beings at work behind the scenes of what we observe in the natural world. I mentioned in the introduction to this blog series that there are the realms of the seen and the unseen. These beings exist in the latter primarily. The existence of those the Bible calls cherubim, angels, and princes is fascinating to me, because it illustrates something of God’s character, which I think is quite important for a Christian author to contemplate—God is not threatened by power.
Because He’s the ultimate authority, the ultimate power, He doesn’t feel insecure or in competition with everyone else who has some level of power. He isn’t ‘at war’ with the devil, in the sense that they’re both struggling against one another and its up in the air who will win. He’s ‘at war’ in the way a man with Draino is at war with a hairball in the tub drain. The devil doesn’t stand a chance. I don’t think God cares much what English word we assign to a being of power, but we should think carefully before using the label ‘god’.
I promised in the intro post that I’d delve into how this touchy topic relates to the human community as well. I think what we can derive from our own experiences will help inform us on the matter of naming deities in fiction.
It’s an observable phenomenon that all human beings crave something to devote themselves to, be it something external to them or within their own psyche. People will have gods. Entire cultures, nations, and empires have been built around religions. Human beings have this weird blind spot to their mortality as they go about the day to day—few people get out of bed and think “Maybe today I’ll die, so I’d better make the best of it”. At the same time, we have an obsession with finding meaning in our daily grind, as though our existence won’t mean anything at all if we live out our 80-odd years without making some contribution or mark upon the world. Often, religion resolves both issues.
If there is something larger than the individual, something being progressed toward which makes the miniscule details of life fall into their rightful place, then a person feels free to live without anxiously weighing every small choice. When they come to die, they feel that they were part of something, that their passing will not be meaningless. Whether or not their beliefs are founded in truth, most people have some sort of belief construct they utilize to mollify the existential questions underlying their mundane choices. I say mollify, because some belief constructs don’t actually give good answers, but they do quiet anxiety to some extent.
If this is true about humankind, we are surrounded by ‘gods’ day and night, plying us with promises of fulfillment and purpose. The god of this moment might be a person’s belly, telling them they’re hungry. A person might be most god-like when they are most self-sacrificial. There are gods of the seen, and gods of the unseen. But above all, nothing is truly by nature God, except Himself. Seeing the real world as a petri dish of so-called deities, or powers, gives me a framework for my worldbuilding in the fantasy genre.
I feel at liberty to create a world where different cultures have different religions, where spiritual beings bestow magical power on individuals who please them. Because in my fantasy world, these are reflections of real-world spiritual influences which request our devotion and offer benefits in return. I won’t draw any obvious allegories in my stories, nor am I exhibiting pantheistic idolatry by labeling characters ‘god’. My books aren’t advocating animism or satanism or any other ‘ism. I’m simply telling a story set in a world that’s meant to be different enough from reality it will surprise you when you find something familiar.
This is how I approach worldbuilding in my fantasy series, The Waking. I’ve a very different framework for my thriller set in Victorian England, A Voracious Grief. In both, I hope my characters are the focal point of my reader’s scrutiny. Because it is my belief—as members of the physical, seen world—it is often difficult to understand the things outside of us. Some of reality is beyond our comprehension entirely. But life and death and a lot of other intangible values hang in the balance of what we believe and the actions we take. So, for the purpose of my stories, deities matter far less to me than the things happening inside each character. But you may find mention of a ‘spirit deity’ or ‘goddess’ in my stories, and that’s just the personal choice I’ve made with my art.
