The Problem with Profanity

I struggle sometimes, as a writer and as a Christian, with profanity. I’ve always taken the stance that I will use profanity in my writing when it feels applicable to a character or the narrative. However, it comes time to publish and share something, and I begin to feel self-conscious about my Christian friends reading it. Some of them would argue there is never a time when profanity is applicable, and I don’t want to offend them. Nor do I want them to think I talk that way. I also worry that I will turn off the few readers I have built up, whose readership I wholeheartedly appreciate. This said, I want to take a few moments to explain and defend my choices.

I would dare say all of you have read books you enjoy. I also envision you’ve read a book that’s changed the way you think or even participate in life. If you’ve gotten your hands on the former, what you were holding was a work of art.

Here’s the thing about good (and especially great) art: the use of light and dark. Good perspective. Verisimilitude (one of my favorite words). Even the artists who bend the rules of their craft must first understand the rules in order to bend them.

I will not be devious with you. My goal in life has always been and will always be to become a better and stronger artist. Good artists engage with and depict the world, the culture, and the trends of their age. This is why so many Christian writers, who are just entertainers, write books that lack that artist’s punch. Their aim is to preach (perhaps), to not offend their readers, and to give their readers the warm fuzzies when everyone gets saved and goes to heaven in the end. There is a place for this type of writing and a market, and I don’t mean to be disparaging to these books because I know some people are uplifted by them. And that’s wonderful. However, artists should be able to depict, critique, comment on, and skewer (if need be) the culture they live in. A writer cannot do this if he cannot depict that culture as it is and as it unfolds before him.

That brings me to this truth. People swear. It’s rather disgusting, and I don’t like it personally. Nor do the people who swear do it effectively but rather as a lazy form of mass-printed rebellion (where we all rebel in the exact same manner and pat each other on the back while doing so). My aim as a Christian writer shouldn’t be to shy away from reality. The Bible certainly doesn’t do that, and if it did, we would probably still be confused about what kind of human behavior it condemns. My job is to show you the truth even when it’s ugly and offensive. As a Christian, I don’t want to JUST appeal to the small subset of people who agree with me and think (mostly) like me. To be a true artist, one must have a universal appeal. A timelessness, so that no matter when someone picks up your work, they can still see the truth and beauty and can see themselves and understand something about the human condition. As a Christian writer, my job is to write in such a way, that those who are mired in our culture will rethink their presuppositions. Sometimes, this can be done by merely holding up a mirror so that they can see themselves as they are, stripped of all their ideological reinforcements and delusions.

Even C.S. Lewis said: “Indeed, work whose Christianity is latent may do quite as much good and may reach some whom the more obvious religious work would scare away. The first business of a story is to be a good story.”¹ This, too, is an important point. A Christian writer, like Lewis, can write well for all crowds. Lewis had characters who cursed, and why? Because that’s how real people act and speak. Writers who have poor dialogue styles get laughed out of the room, even by the very audiences who would find them most appealing. (Personally, I haven’t touched a Christian fiction book voluntarily since I was a teenager because of this very issue. It’s rarely good writing.)

It’s also important for a writer to have that autonomy because there are times when the critique needs to be made against their own community– especially when churches, leaders, or “Christian movements” leave the truth of God’s Word.

I do not want to set a precedent of cowardice for myself. There is so much in this world that seeks to attack a Christian artist looking to hone his craft that I feel I must be bold NOW before my own peers and friends. I also charge you, my friends, to not pull down a writer who is a Christian simply because of a few swear words or even the scenes that may come when they hold up a mirror to this world.

I know I’ve set a lofty goal for myself— one I honestly don’t know if I’ll ever attain. But I want to say this to you now— the readers who’ve been there from the first— I do see your concerns, and I hope you’ll hold me to my goals. So now, when you see a certain creative non-fiction piece published this September in The Lowestoft Chronicle, please don’t be shocked to see some profanity. After all, I cannot control the language of the people I meet in real life. I only ask you to give it a chance and see it as another step on the road to becoming the writer God is calling me to be. Like most people who are growing, I will get things wrong, and I might get some things right, but I’ll never get very far without you.

Happy Reading, my friends.

_¹https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/blogs/justin-taylor/15-pieces-of-writing-advice-from-c-s-lewis/