Yes.
Fictional folk tales of other worlds and otherworldly creatures have a very long history; the Bible says nothing against them. We’re firmly in the territory of “doubtful things” here, and in this territory, one of the keys in a matter like this is “let each one be fully convinced in his own mind.” Read Romans 14; that’ll get your feet under you. Then tackle the issue: study it through, think it out for yourself, and then be settled in your convictions.
As you think it through, one of the things you should be thinking about is the category itself. A work of fiction is ‘paranormal’ as opposed to what? The answer, in our culture, is ‘as opposed to a fictional world that a materialist would be happy with.’ Do you see the problem?
Why should a Christian default to setting stories in a materialist world? Answer: because most North American Christians believe the biblical stories, but don’t actually believe the world is the sort of place the Bible says it is. They are materialists by reflex, with a whitelist of biblical miracles. So they think it’s a “Christian” endeavor to write a story Richard Dawkins would approve of. This is just a sign that their aesthetics (and their theology) have not been formed by a deep and thoughtful attention to the Bible and the world God actually made.
Let’s not be those people. The world we actually live in was spoken into existence by God and is continuously upheld by the word of His power. If matter-made-of-divine-words is not a magical world, what would be? In the (true) stories God tells, there’s a magical duel (Moses vs. Pharaoh’s magicians), a guy with supernatural strength that seems tied to the length of his hair (Samson), An angel that gives people energy by touching them (Daniel), a floating axe head (Elisha), a talking donkey (Balaam), healing by touch (Jesus, repeatedly), shadow (Peter), “charged” cloths (Paul), and unconscious power transfer (woman with the flow of blood). We have fire-breathing creatures, a man outrunning a horse (Elijah), a guy who commands the sun and the moon (Joshua). And that’s just the uncommon stuff. We also have a metal that transforms from soft to hard and sharpenable when you dunk it in oil; a fruit that turns into wine thanks to a tiny creature that grows right on the grape’s skin, eats sugar, pees alcohol, and farts carbonation; poisons that combine into something essential to life (and it’s on your kitchen table); rocks that pull on metal from a distance, influencing the behavior of iron filings without even touching them.
And don’t even get me started on birds flying: it’s not movie magic; they actually do that.
Can a Christian tell a story set in a magical world with magical creatures in it, about people who abuse the magic of the world around them, and others who treat their magical world the way they should, and use its properties in right ways? Well…what else would we write about?
Things you should read as you’re thinking this through:
- Tolkien, “On Fairy-Stories”
- C. S. Lewis, Of Other Worlds
- Wilson, The Ashtown Burials series (for a contemporary example of doing this really well)
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