I was reading an interesting post by a non-believing acquaintance of mine a few minutes ago. It became clear that authentic magic brings power, and we have a real advantage. But how can that be?

To quote from the article: “When we assess a piece of art (book), we try to intuit whether the artist (author) was inspired or merely trying to create “eye candy” for profit.” We intuitively know this is true. We’re turned off by a book that was obviously written for profit. We can tell by the storyline, the genre, the type of main character, or a host of other things.

More than that, if we ask, the Spirit will tell us if a story is “authentic”. We know if the Lord is in a piece…if the truth is being told. We all make these judgements in our own lives. We need to add this wisdom we’ve learned by experience to the lives of our characters. We need to make them real!

But the magic part of authentic magic brings power?

Again, we have a real advantage. To quote the article:

“Magic comes in many forms. It can be fantastic or real, and it’s as appealing to the most stalwart rational pragmatist as it is to a child. Magic is the catalyst that makes a potent story happen in moments or days instead of years.”

Another word which can be used for magic is supernatural. The power flowing through an ordinary Christian dwarfs, blows away, shatters the power of any wizard, idol worshipping priest, demon, orc, monster, whatever. Scripture is filled with ordinary men and women who defeated huge armies, stopped demonic activity, humiliated false priests, saw false believers drop dead, people rise from the dead, a man walking on water (Peter), a man teleported across many miles in southern Israel (Phillip), and a host of other marvelous events. Events on this level have been common throughout the world since very early in the 20th century.

We know these things have happened. I remember a woman healed of a heart condition in a prayer meeting and her pacemaker vaporized/disappeared. Why do I see things like this so rarely in the fiction I read? This shows us practically how authentic magic brings power.

We need to add spiritual reality to our books!

I think that many don’t do it because they fear lower sales. I believe that’s a simple problem easily solved by writing prowess. We can’t chicken out, just because we can’t immediately see how to add Truth to our tales.

What do you think?

We need to talk about this. Right?