Since I was a young girl, I have always enjoyed reading teen fiction novels. Not the trashy ones, but the ones with relatable characters and a plot that takes me away from everyday life for a while.
A little insight into how far back this passion of mine goes: I picked up the Harry Potter series in 3rd grade trying to read as many books as I could to win a pizza party for my class. (Every 50 pages counted as a book for the competition and the Harry Potter books are very thick.) Even though my class never won the contest, I grew along with the series as I waited for the 5th, 6th, and 7th books to come out and watched all the movies when they came out too. But my love for teen novels didn’t stop at Harry Potter. Some of my favorite series include: The Hunger Games, The Sisterhood of Traveling Pants, the Inkheart trilogy, and most recently, the Maze Runner series.
Now that I’m older and I’m a Christian living my faith, I get a different perspective on teen novels than I did when I was a teen myself. I have a Biblical worldview now, which means that the lens through which I view the world and my experiences are how things relate back to the Bible and Christianity. Does the book line up with what the Bible has to say about different issues? Does the story have good morals and themes? Is it violent or graphic? Is the author a Christian, another religion, or an atheist? Does the author agree with the dystopian society they create in their book? Do they disagree with it and the book itself is a comment on how a society shouldn’t be run like this? Is this their prediction of what the world will be like in the future, or just a fictional story meant to entertain? These are important questions, because each person’s writing, even if it’s fictional, tells a little bit about who the author is and how they view the world.
So these are the questions I would consciously be asking myself as I finally picked up the second book in the Maze Runner series, The Scorch Trials, after reading the first one this past summer. I mostly read the book for enjoyment, but with my new Christian lens on it, I looked at the deaths in the books as especially brutal, particularly when the characters had no time to stop to mourn those who died on the way as they ran for their lives in survival-type Trials, or as the characters themselves became desensitized to death after a while. Don’t get me wrong, it’s an amazing, well-written series that I really hope doesn’t have a disappointing ending as I’m only on Book 2 and already have an attachment to these characters, but there are also aspects of it like desensitizing death and a government agency performing survival experiments on kids who are most likely all under the age of 18 that hurts my Christian heart when I read this book.
But the reason I’m writing this blog is not to write a critique of the book and encourage you to read or not read it, but that I found some quotes in the book that stood out to me that could relate to God or the World Race in some way. And that’s really awesome! Finding little nuggets of Christian-related gold tucked into a novel where I’m pretty sure the author didn’t intend to do that at all is just another way that God is showing His glory even through secular (non-Christian) media. There are always traces of our Creator everywhere around us, sometimes it just takes a finer lens to notice them.
The first quote that stuck out to me initially caught my attention because the countries mentioned as being affected by fictional destruction included all of the areas of the world my squad is going to be serving in: “Central and South Americas, most of Africa, the Middle East, and southern Asia. Lots of dead lands, lots of dead people” (Dashner 2010, pg. 203). But then I noticed that James Dashner singlehandedly mentions the majority of the areas that make up the 10/40 window as the place where there are “dead lands and dead people.” What is the 10/40 window you may ask? It’s area between 10 degrees north and 40 degrees north latitude where the most unreached people groups in the world live. The majority of the people who live in the 10/40 window have never heard of the Gospel or have very few people who have heard of it in their countries.
10/40 window (Photo courtesy of Wikipedia.)
I’m not sure if this was intentional in Dashner’s writing, but Christians typically refer to people who don’t personally know Jesus as the unreached, the lost, and the unsaved. When you come to have a relationship with the living God and know Him personally, you are said to “die to self and live no longer for yourself, but for Him” and the person you were before being forgiven is said to be “dead” while the you who has been forgiven is said to be “born again” or “alive.” Romans 6:11 says, “In the same way, count yourselves dead to sin but alive to God in Christ Jesus” (NIV). So I found significance in this quote as Dashner mentions the 10/40 window to be “dead lands and dead people” as the many of the people who are living in these lands today are living in sin, living for idols, living for themselves, and not yet “alive” in Christ.
There are a small amount of Christians who live in these areas who are being persecuted for their faith daily, who are emigrating out of their countries to live in more tolerant countries, or who practice Christianity in secret in order to spread the message of Jesus Christ to their home countries. These people are very brave and they are facing a lot more pressure for being a Christian daily then many of us Americans will ever face in a country where we are free to practice our faith.
Yes, we sometimes face small “persecutions” for our faith, being snubbed by someone because we are a Christian, certain friends distancing themselves from you because you talk about Jesus too much, people laughing in your face because you believe in Christianity which they don’t think is logical (the joke’s on them since Christianity has the most logic of all worldviews), people who knew the “old you” who may not understand who the “new you” is now that you have a personal relationship with Christ.
But these are all minor things in comparison to what our fellow brothers and sisters in Christ are facing overseas with ISIS right now. They are facing the choice of: convert to a religion you don’t believe in, pay the fine, or die. True Christians know that there is only one real choice. In Matthew 10:33 Jesus said, “But everyone who denies me here on earth, I will also deny before my Father in heaven” (NLT).
Jesus died for us to forgive us of our sins. He is not something to be ashamed of or someone worth turning away from. According to Matthew 28:18, “Then Jesus came to them and said,‘All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me’” (NIV). God gave Jesus the authority to judge everyone in the afterlife. It’s not a matter of being “good enough” or the “good outweighing the bad.” Having a relationship with Jesus means repenting of your sins, dying to your own will and desires, and following Him with all your heart, mind, and soul wherever He leads you.
Having a relationship with Jesus is knowing that you can never be “good enough” when set against the measure of a holy and righteous God. Nothing you can do can make up for sinning even one time. One white lie, one moment of gossip, one moment of anger, one moment of pride, one moment of my will and not His.
But there is something that has been done for you. Jesus was the perfect sinless man, both fully man and fully God. He sacrificed Himself for you by becoming your sin on the cross, every sin you’ve ever committed and will commit in the future. He took the punishment for your sin, which is death.
Being sinless, this was a death he did not deserve, but he freely decided to die on the cross so that all of humanity could be saved. But he didn’t just die. He died and rose again. He conquered death and arose to Heaven and is now seated at the right hand of God the Father.
I’m sure many of you reading this have heard of this before. But do you understand the significance and importance of what He did? Jesus died to take away our sin. Your sin, my sin, everyone’s sin. Now He offers us forgiveness as a free gift, not something that we can earn, but something freely given to us. All we have to do is accept this gift.
How can you accept his forgiveness? Talk to Jesus by praying to him. Tell him everything you’ve ever done wrong, and allow yourself to be forgiven by him. If that makes you nervous, just think about this. He knows it all already. God already knows everything bad you’ve ever done in your life. Nothing you say can surprise Him. He wants you to tell him about what you’ve done, and be truly sorry for it. Only when you are truly sorry for your sin can He forgive you. No sin is too big and no person is too far gone.
Before I knew Jesus, I used to think that I wasn’t that bad of a person when compared to other people. But when I compared myself to a holy and perfect God, I felt like I was too far gone to be forgiven.
But then I talked to God about how I felt. I told Him I messed up and just how much I messed up. I told Him I wasn’t sure if He could forgive me. But I also told Him that if He could forgive me, I would choose to follow Him from now on.
And guess what? God forgave me. I felt a literal weight was being lifted off my shoulders. I felt light, and free, and happy, and forgiven. I made that promise to God on Nov. 8, 2013. I’m not perfect by any means and I still mess up a lot. But I know that every time I do I can go to God and tell Him I’m truly sorry, and He will forgive me all over again. Why? Because He loves me. He loves every single one of us on this earth. Yes, even you. No matter what you have done or who you have been, you are never too far gone for forgiveness. I am a living testament of that forgiveness. Praying to God and asking Him to forgive me is the best decision I have ever made in my life.
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*Disclaimer: These are my own thoughts and ideas about finding God in places you wouldn’t expect. These speculations may not reflect the James Dashner’s religious views or intents when writing this book. The quotes used from the Scorch Trials were intended to show God’s glory through unexpected sources.*
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An update on how the rest of my February fundraising went: Thank you so much to everyone who has been reading along, praying for me, and donating! Since my last blog post, I had 2 people I don’t know personally donate to me, one donation for $50 and an anonymous donation for $30! Another person from my old church donated $50 to me as well! More people bought hats from my hat and scarf fundraiser that is going on until the end of March! One of my best friends offered to help buy some of the gear I still need for my mission trip and I am going to be speaking at a church in late March and two churches in April. Thank you all so much for supporting me and for helping me to be the hands and feet of God by helping send me on my mission trip!
Please pray that God continues to send supporters to join my support team, pray that I would be confident and bold while speaking at these churches, and please pray that God would continue to use me to spread His love and His message to all who need to hear it. Thank you all! You guys are the best!
