Lessons in Allomancy Pt. 1: Reborn is Mistborn

Anyone who has known me for any amount of times knows that I love to read.  My favorite genre, of course, is fantasy.  I’m not exactly sure what it is that draws me to this genre, but there is just something about stories that could never really happen that I find enjoyable. 

Recently I discovered a series called The Mistborn Trilogy.  I bought the first book to read on our car trip to Virginia, and I had all 500 pages finished by the end of the first day.  When we arrived I quickly bought the other two and read them in less than a week (I had to work around freshman orientation).  The first book has a fairly simple premise.  The tyrannical and immortal Lord Ruler has ruled the world for the last thousand years.  Black ash falls from the sky, what little vegetation survives is brown and withered, and at night the land is covered in mists that are rumored to kill people.  There are two groups of people: the down-trodden skaa, who work as slave labor in the country and abused peasants in the cities, and the pampered nobility, whose ancestors were supporters of the Lord Ruler when he first seized power.  In the capitol city of Luthadel a criminal mastermind named Kelsier is gathering a crew and crafting an elaborate plan to overthrow the Lord Ruler and free the empire once and for all.  But first he’s going to have to win the help of Vin, a young thief girl who trusts no one.  Vin will then have to master Allomancy, a magical power granted only to nobles, if Kelsier’s rebellion is to have any chance at all.  And even that may not be enough.  These books are unlike anything I have every read.  Very rarely do you come across a work of fiction that is as incredibly original as the Mistborn series.  Unfortunately they were not written by a Christian author, so the idea of divinity is skewed.  But the story itself is brilliant.  Pick one up, and I can all but guarantee you that you won’t be able to stop until you have read all three. 

But enough of my book review.  (Yes, there really is a spiritual connection here.  Just hang with me for a minute.)  In the Mistborn universe, there is a form of magic known as Allomancy.  Certain metals in this world carry special powers.  Allomancers are people who are capable of “burning” these metals.  By ingesting scrapings of a particular metal they are able to harness its power, at least until the metal is used up.  (There is also Feruchemy and Hemalurgy, which also involve the properties of metals, but those aren’t important right now.)  Mistings, then, are people who are capable of burning only one specific metal, meaning they have only one power.  Mistborns, on the other hand, are capable of burning any and all metals containing Allomantic powers.  The trilogy lists fourteen such metals, with two yet remaining undiscovered.  Some charts I have seen actually list eighteen metals, but that’s beside the point.  (Again, I promise I really am taking this somewhere.)  The most common, and arguably most useful, are the basic eight metals, which are composed in to four sets of two.  Burning pewter strengthens an Allomancer’s physical abilities like agility and physical strength, while tin enhances the senses (sharpening hearing, sight, etc).  Steel gives an Allomancer the ability to push metal directly away from themselves, while iron instead pulls metal towards them.  Skilled Mistborns are able to combine these two skills into something that resembles flying.  Brass allows an Allomancer to soothe people by suppressing specific emotions such as anger or fear.  Zinc instead riots them, flaring up desired emotions.  Bronze allows people to sense nearby Allomancers and determine which metals they are burning.  Copper, on the other hand, acts as something of a smokescreen.  An Allomancer burning copper is able to shield those around them from Seekers (bronze Mistings). 

Now I know that can be a lot to remember, so I’m including a picture of an Allomantic table so you can check the various metals and their powers when I mention them.  The charts include the specific metal (organized by type), the nickname for a Misting who can only burn this metal, the symbol for that metal, and a description of its capabilities.  (Click the picture to open it full-size in another tab.) 

By this point I’m sure you’re wondering, “Ash, where in the world are you taking this?”  Allow me to explain.  Many of you may have noticed from this blog that I’m something of a metaphor nerd.  I can find metaphors in just about anything.  As I was reading the Mistborn books, I was struck by how many of the Allomantic abilities reminded me of aspects of our Christian walk with God.  And I’ve decided to share my crazy metaphor with all of you.  =)

The easiest metal to start with, I think, is pewter.  An Allomancer burning pewter becomes much stronger, faster, and more agile than a normal person.  These abilities can be used to gain a strong advantage in a fight, to survive high jumps, lift heavy objects, etc.  Pewter also helps a person keep going when they should be exhausted and can keep them from dying from wounds that should kill.  An Allomancer flaring pewter (pushing the ability to its absolute limit and strength) can run for days without stopping and cover vast distances while doing so.  So what do Superman-style powers have to do with Christianity?  Allow me to explain.  Life is not easy.  Any person can tell you that.  There are good moments and highlights and fun experiences, but for every up there is almost always a down.  A hill is simply not a hill unless there’s a valley next to it.  There has to be a low in order for us to fully appreciate the high. 

Granted, the lows in life are typically caused by the fact that man as a whole is sinful and fallen and we live in a world that is sinful and fallen.  But Jesus Christ loved us so much that He died on the cross so that we might have eternal life.  When we accept Him as our Lord and Savior, we gain an advantage over the rest of the world.  That advantage is strength.  Jesus Christ becomes, quite literally, our strength, though it may not always be a physical strength (Exodus 15:2, 2 Samuel 22:33, Psalm 28:7, Psalm 46:1-3, Isaiah 41:10, Philippians 4:13).  He is our rock, the one we cling to when life gets hard (Proverbs 18:10).  He is the one who gives us a reason to keep going, who pulls us through all of the bad times (Isaiah 40:29-31, Isaiah 41:10).  He is the reason we can have joy even in the midst of sorrow (Habakkuk 3:17-18, Philippians 4:4).  We know that no matter what happens, God will take care of us (Deuteronomy 31:6, Romans 8:28).  And no matter what happens, nothing can ever separate us from God (Romans 8:35-39).  Basically, Jesus is our pewter.  He makes us stronger than the world, strong enough that we can endure anything.  Now when an Allomancer stops burning pewter, particularly after flaring it for a long period of extreme physical exertion, their body is completely exhausted.  Similarly, if we choose to walk away from God that strength disappears and we are forced to face the world alone, something none of us are strong enough to do.  It may work for a time, but in the end it will catch up with you.  If we stick with God, however, if we walk in His truth, if we keep burning our pewter, so to speak, we will be strong enough (with God’s help) to handle anything that comes our way. 

The opposite and yet companion of pewter is tin.  Burning tin enhances all of an Allomancer’s senses, and thereby changes how they see the world around them.  Everything is sharper and clearer.  In the same way, reading God’s word and living with the Holy Spirit inside us serves to sharpen our own eyes.  We are called to see the world as God does.  In Matthew 9:36 Jesus sees the crowds and it says that He “had compassion on them because they were... like sheep without a shepherd.”  Jesus felt for people. When He sees Jerusalem in Luke 19:41 He actually weeps because He knows that so many in the city are lost and because He knows of the trials that  the Jewish people as a whole will soon face (in 66 A.D. the Jewish people rebelled against Rome and four years later the Romans destroyed the temple and much fo Jerusalem).  Throughout His ministry, Jesus had a heart for people.  We should be the same way.  When we look at the world around us, we should see it as Christ did.  We should feel compassion for the people around us.  The sight of people who are hurting or who are far from God should break our hearts, just as it did Christ’s.  We need to see with spiritual eyes, just as it says in 2 Corinthians 4:18.  We can’t see people’s souls, and yet those are what will last forever.  1 Samuel 16:7 says that the Lord looks at the hearts of men.  So should we.  Guys, we have got to learn to use our spiritual eyes.  We need to learn to live by faith, not by sight (2 Corinthians 5:7).  So many of us have become content to rely on our physical eyes.  We see the world around us, see people who are hurting, people who need Christ, and yet we do very little.  We’ve stopped burning our tin in favor of being able to live in our comfort zones.  Guys, whether we know it or not, this is sin.  It is direct defiance of God’s command to go and tell and serve.  And I’m not just talking to you.  I’m just as guilty of this as anyone.  But it’s time to finally put a stop to that.  God has called us to reach the world (Matthew 28:19-20).  We need to wake ourselves up, to turn our tin back on, and start living life with spiritual eyes. 

I’m going to skip down to two of the mental metals now.  The first is copper.  Copper Mistings are known as Smokers.  A Smoker, especially a strong one, can protect the other Allomancers around him from being detected.  When we place our faith in Christ, He becomes our Smoker.  He is our hedge of protection.  Psalm 32:7 says that God is our hiding place and that He will protect us from trouble.  Proverbs 18:10 says the name of the Lord is a strong tower and the righteous will run to Him and be safe.  Psalm 28:7 says that the Lord is our strength and our shield.  In Psalm 143:9 David speaks of hiding himself in God.  As long as we stay near our Smoker, as long as we stay in God’s word and remain in Him, we are safe.  While we are in that place Satan cannot lay a finger on us unless God chooses to let him.  And when that happens, it is always for the purpose of strengthening our faith and bringing eventual glory to God.  But aside from that, we are invincible as long as we stay near our Smoker. 

On the flipside of that is bronze, the metal of Misting Seekers.  Bronze allows an Allomancer to sense others using Allomancy nearby.  As Christians, we are constantly burning bronze, constantly on the unconscious lookout for other believers.  They should be easy to recognize.  One Christian should stand out to other people in the same way that other Allomancers automatically stand out to Seekers.  But for some reason, we don’t.  At least, not in this modern Americanized culture where almost everyone claims to be Christians.  Why is that?  Why is it so hard for us to tell the true Christians from the false, the real from the mediocre?  The perfectly honest answer is that somewhere along the way our Christianity has fizzled out.  The fire that began to burn inside of us when we gave our lives to Christ has slowly been allowed to died over the years.  The minute an Allomancer stops burning metals, it becomes impossible for a Seeker to distinguish them from anyone else.   The same is true of Christians.  As soon as we walk away from God, as soon as we stop reading our Bible every day, as soon as we start putting off prayer until tomorrow because we "don’t have time", our metals cease to burn.  And so does the fire inside of us. 

Christians are supposed to be something special.  1 Peter 2:9 says that God has chosen us out of the world.  As a result of that we are supposed to bear fruit (John 15:16), fruit that should be evident and should show us to be unlike the rest of the world (Galatians 5:22-23).  We are supposed to be set apart, no longer conforming to what the world says (Romans 3:22).  We should both look and act born again, making it very obvious that we are something completely different from the rest of the world. 

One of the girls on my hall said the other night that so many people like to say that they are at a standstill in their relationship with God, but that this is actually impossible.  Either we are walking with God, or we are walking away from Him.  Matthew 12:30 makes this very clear.  Jesus says that whoever is not with Him is against Him.  There is no middle ground.  If we are not burning our metals, then we look just exactly like everyone else.  Guys, we cannot afford to get this one wrong.  We can no longer afford to be mediocre cultural Christians who, to quote a video from my class, “go to church on Sunday and worship like God exists, and then spend the other six days living like He doesn’t.”  This is what the rest of the world finds so hard to believe about Christians.  They know what Christianity teaches.  The world says that the greatest person is the richest and the smartest, and yet in Mark 9:35 Jesus directly contradicts that by saying that the greatest in heaven will be the lowest, the one who serves the most.  We are supposed to serve the world, to be an example of Christ’s love.  The world knows that.  They know that we are supposed to be different.  But when we turn off our metals and act just like them, all they see is a bunch of fake hypocrites. 

I’m not trying to offend anyone here.  I’m talking to myself just as much as anyone else.  But we have got to get this right.  We have got to get out of our comfortable American churches with the plush seats and the fuzzy feel-good sermons and get out into the world and start living for Christ.  The disciples didn’t have any of that, guys.  They had no high-paying jobs, no comfortable beds to sleep in, no warm meals to go home to at night.  Their lives were not easy.  In fact, the first-generation church was persecuted so much that many of them died martyrs’ deaths.  But persecution does something incredible: it causes the church to grow.  Seriously.  It's a bit like a grease fire.  The more water Satan throws on it, the worse it gets.  At this very moment the underground church in China is exploding, while the church in America and western Europe seems to be on its death bed.  Why is that?  I believe that one of the biggest problems is that western Christianity has become comfortable.  It's easy to be a Christian in America.  And when life is easy we think we don’t need God anymore.  We get comfortable, and so we turn off our metals and without even meaning to we start to fall away.  If we're not being forced to struggle for our faith, it won't grow.  Satan knows that.  In fact, it seems to me that a lack of persecution is actually the strongest attack Satan can make on the church.  Because then when the trials finally come our faith has grown so weak and feeble that we fall away. 


In the book Dune, the beginning of an ingenious sci-fi series by Frank Herbert, a young man named Paul Atreides becomes the leader of the Fremen people and leads them to rise up and overthrow the corrupt empire they have been enslaved by.  After that his fighters sweep across the galaxy on a bloody jihad, bringing all of the planeets under his countrol.  These men believed so strongly in Paul and in what he stood for that they were willing to die for it.  By the second book the empire has stabilized somewhat.  In the third book, however, the jihad is over and those same men who were ready to throw away everything for their beliefs are now wealthy and comfortable, living in secure positions as supporters of Paul.  There is no longer a war to fight, and as a result their religion has gradually been watered down to nothingg more than trappings and rituals.  The unshakable faith that would have led them to fight and die willingly is gone.  Paul notices this, and he gives a speech to his people (in disguise), mocking their so-called "faith".  He asks the crowd: “Is your religion real when it costs you nothing and carries no risk?  Is your religion real when you fatten upon it?”  Guys, this is what has happened to the American church.  Not every church, but the majority overall.  Christianity has become the popular thing to do.  The perscution has died away.  we no longer have to fight to believe.  Christianity no longer carries a risk.  And as a result, our faith has died. 

Guys, if we are not completely sold out for God and completely on fire for Him (or at least longing for it and really trying to make it a reality), then we need to seriously reevaluate our walks with Christ.  Joshua 24:15 says this: “But if serving the Lord seems undesirable to you, then choose for yourselves this day whom you will serve...  But as for me and my household we will serve the Lord.”  You can’t serve both God and yourself.  You can’t walk towards Him and away at the same time.  You can’t burn your metals and still blend in with the crowd.  There is no middle ground here.  We have to make a choice.  Will we continue to blend in with the world, hiding the knowledge that could save countless souls?  Or will we stand up and proudly turn our metals on, letting the world know exactly who we are?  Because if we do, I promise you that they will notice.  It’s like John Wesley once said: “Set yourself on fire with passion, and people will come for miles to watch you burn." 

I’m going to stop here because this is getting pretty long and there are still four more metals to go.  (Well, five, but I’ll explain that later.)  I hope you guys are enjoying this and learning something from it.  If there’s any way I can pray for you guys, please let me know.  Thanks for taking the time to read this.  I love you guys!

-Ash