119,677 Words- For What????

I remember asking my sixth grade teacher, at the Christian school that I was attending, why God would put the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil in the Garden of Eden? My reasoning was that it was unfair for God to create these inexperienced beings, artificially insert this random prohibition, then place a demonic, and infinitely more sophisticated, tempter in the garden with them.

I was unsatisfied with the answer.

That is one of the questions that we bring up in the book. We bring up these questions not to provide an answer, but rather, to provide a fresh perspective to approach the issue from.

I would guess that many might take issue with our use of the two trees placed in the garden as a gateway for interstellar travel, but I would hope that by coming up with an alternative way of looking at the problem, you, at least, wrestle with the issue, and hopefully draw your own conclusions.

Book One- Done! Now What?

She carefully carried the urn up the treacherous trail toward the overlook.

Months ago I wrote that line, the first of Tail of the Dragon. Now, the book is complete, has been published, and is available on Amazon. I have a box of paperbacks with a cover that I designed. It envelops words that were composed by my brother and myself. It is a pretty cool feeling.

And yet now I am confronted by the daunting task of getting people to read it. How do you get people to invest their time and thought into something that you created? That is a question that I will wrestle with in the months to come, but I believe that it is worth the effort.

Why?

Because I believe that this book (and series) does more than just tell a story. I believe that it wrestles with truths that most of us living in modernity no longer struggle with. I believe that it begs questions that we have stopped asking.

Philip Yancey and Dr. Phillip Brand wrote a book called 'The Gift of Pain.' It details Dr. Brand's experience working with leprosy patients, who lose their sense of pain. This desensitization causes them to injure themselves repeatedly, without realizing it. They begin to destroy parts of their bodies because they have no warning system telling them what they are doing.

Sometimes when I watch people stumbling around, staring at their smart phones, I wonder if we have become mental lepers, walking across hot coals, oblivious. Writing this book has rekindled some of the awareness that I had lost. My hope is that it does the same for others.