Resurrections?

I said that the results of the survey (link) and my thoughts on the topic of resurrections would be posted relatively soon. Now, 40 days later…

I only had 4 responses to the survey, but they did express some good points.

The general consensus was that resurrections done through God (or his representative in the fictional world) were okay, but that other resurrections were not.

I would definitely agree with that. All matters of life and death should come from God's hands, whether through a gift of power to an individual or a direct act of God. No dark magic/sorcery.

Resurrections can give a sense of awe at God's power. If used too many times, however, this can be lessened because of the 'commonness' of them.

One person expressed an interesting idea, that I hadn't thought about before. In her words:

In general, I have problems with resurrections that are created by authors. I just don't think that it's for humans, in our fallen state, to judge when a person should be resurrected or not. Really, it's only right for God to do that. These are, of course, just my thoughts, and I could be very mistaken. - Sine Nomine

I would have to disagree with that, at least in a created universe.

In your own world, you are in control. You can do pretty much anything you want.

(Some exceptions would be changing God's principles, such as punishing evil, and always doing what is right. See here for a post by Bryan Davis about that.)

You are in control.

As long as you stay within God's principles, you can have resurrections. Don't have God resurrecting someone as a reward for their sin, for example. But you have to judge whether or not a resurrection is appropriate for the situation in your story.

As Sine Nomine said above, this is only my thoughts, and I could be wrong. If you disagree, feel free to leave a comment and we can discuss it :)