Who would want to walk down a dark path with Stephen King?  Where’s the courage necessary to face the demonic horde that we meet when in the company of Frank Peretti?  How do we find the path taking us into the strange lands charted out by J.R.R. Tolkien and C.S. Lewis?

      Thrillers and Christian fantasy grab us.  We don’t know where they are going to take us.  They may not even be polite to us, forcing readers to experience settings that they don’t much like.  The power of Christian thrillers and fantasies are that they open up doors and invite us (or pulls us) into a spiritual kingdom.  The Apostle Paul tells us that there is a terrible battle being fought within this greater reality.  Yet I wonder, how many Christians cast a single thought in the direction of this warfare within a given day?  Week?  Month?  Perhaps year?

      I’m convinced that words crafted about this greater reality are always shadows.  Writers of Christian thrillers and fantasies sweat out their images, but are always aware that we can’t get them right.  Angels, demons, the weapons of heaven and hell, mock our vain attempts to capture their subtlety.  I may club the reader with the stark evil of a satanic mistress, but I know that the greatest evil may lie in the whisper of a misguided friend.

      There is a battle going on even now as I write.  You may not hear the gunfire or bombs exploding, and that’s the problem.  If the sounds of the spiritual battle clamored about us, we might understand our jeopardy.  As it is, we often sleep while our bloodthirsty enemy walks in our bedchamber, leering at our slumbering form.

       Each child of Adam engages a second by second struggle with evil as it in infiltrates every facet of human life.  Why does God permit this evil?  Christian thrillers and fantasies may allegorize evil, but its pestilence within our experience is anything but fiction.  Great Evil… Good God is the product of my life-long

attempt to see the face of Goodness within a fallen creation.

        I am now at peace with God.  I am persuaded that He is completely good and all powerful.  He is working the elect of God until they are ready to receive perfection.  Glory awaits!  A time is coming when Love will be fully incarnate.