Links! Doctor Who, Abraham Lincoln, and more!

Sean Gaffney is writing a series on the Christology of Doctor Who, and it's brilliant. Since I became a Doctor Who fan because the main character reminded me of Christ, I'm really digging this blog series. The reason, btw, that it can be a good series is that Gaffney recognizes both that A) the series' authors aren't Christians and so the show isn't a straight-forward Christian analogy (not even close!) but that B) our world is God's, and therefore any really good heroic stories are going to have echoes of THE good heroic Story.  (And Doctor Who is a truly superlative heroic story.) Intro to the series is here, and the first two entries are here and here.

John Mark Reynolds writes about what he's learned from Abraham Lincoln. An excerpt:

Fifth, God is not on the side of America, but America can be on God’s side. Lincoln was too smart to believe that the cause of the Union was God’s cause. He hoped that he could associate the United States with what God was doing on the earth.

God is not an American, but Lincoln tried to make America godly. He knew virtue was in both sides and vice in every man who fought in the War. Lincoln acted boldly, but always with charity.

Is writing therapy? R.L. LaFevers of Shrinking Violets says that it's not in the traditional sense, but,

It has not provided me an avenue to work out my past and my own emotional baggage on the page. Instead, the hard work I do to make my writing better has spilled out into my non-writing life. How could it not? One of the first lessons we learn about characters is that whatever conflict they are going through affects all aspects of their lives. So when we as writers push ourselves to strive and grow, of course that is going to spill out into other aspects of our lives as well.

The rest of the article is well worth reading, for any artist.

Peace of Christ to you,
Jessica Snell