Are there parts of life it is wrong to imitate in art? The question may rise in your mind when you’re writing a story and come to the part with the triple murder-suicide that ends in a catastrophic genocidal explosion, or, more mundanely, it may come to you as to me, when you’re considering if you’re going to use curse words in full, blank out all but the first letter as some older authors did, or avoid them altogether. The question is for many an obvious absurdity and for others a real concern, but at any rate it’s one worth answering, if only to have an idea of which side is right.

For this purpose, we must acknowledge there are two main categories of ‘possibly wrong to depict’. The first category covers deeds that are themselves wrong- cursing (taking the name of the Lord in vain), sexual sins like rape or polygamy, or murder. Then comes the second category: stuff that’s inherently and necessarily wrong in real life. In this category we find general violence (gore), which can be evil, justified, or even required, and marriage¹, which some have asserted to be of dubious morality to depict because the depiction could trivialize the covenant². We’ll go over these cases one by one, half this week, half next week. Each one will have different emphases, but we’ll see pattern emerging and will learn from each a refinement or a rule by which to judge their appearance in our own art and in other’s.

Cursing

Cursing is, unlike the rest, a sin of the mouth and the word. Cursing, unlike the physical acts of murder or rape, unlike the work of marriage, can be accomplished on the page without the help of any other, without a second person or anything outside of the fingers tapping the keyboard, the hand twitching the pen. It also comes in a lot of different flavors, only one of which is really a concern today. Sexual, scatological, and other brands of curses (and curse-adjacent words, like racial, political, and national epithets) can certainly be an issue, but only theological curses directly transgress the Third Commandment, taking the name of God, or the work essentially His, in vain.

Cursing is a sin of intent, you’ll note. You can say God’s name without violating the Third Commandment, whatever the Jews of the first century may have feared. The sin of the matter comes when we speak His name without proper reverence, treat it as something of less weight than His status as sovereign Creator and holy God demands.³ To do so is to ‘take the name of the Lord in vain’. This distinction means that stories have an out: while the curse may be meant by the character, it does not have to be meant by the author. It may be both a telling of the truth regarding the world and a condemnation of the sin of the world (We’ll keep seeing this pattern). The author’s right to write of sin comes, in the end, from a combination of its truth to the world and its lack of intent on the author’s part.

However blameless it can be, however, to treat the use of such violations of the Third Commandment lightly would be itself breaking the Third Commandment. Such devices should, therefore, be employed only when necessary, only when their benefit truly outweighs the risk of failing to arrogate to God His true reverence. Other warnings apply, but we’ll see those in other contexts.

Sexual Sins; Murder; Other Physical Perfidy

With these deeds we must first acknowledge that there is a difference between conceiving of the act and doing it, between depicting it and carrying it out. We don’t call the murder mystery author a murderer, for all he has probably outdone the average serial killer in how many murders he’s planned, and almost certainly in variety. Unfortunately, our discussion of the matter cannot stop here. In Matthew 5:21-30, Christ clarifies the extent of the moral law, assures us that it covers the mind and the heart, not merely the hand. On the subject of lust, for instance, He says, “But I say to you that everyone who looks at a woman with lustful intent has already committed adultery with her in his heart” (28). So, on these grounds, it is entirely conceivable that in writing and reading stories, in imagining and portraying and receiving those portrayals of all the sin man can name, we are embroiling ourselves and our readers in sin, in murder of the heart, in adultery of the heart, in the silent form of every heinous crime we would decry in history.

Indeed, if we present sin with the intent of committing or vindicating (not explaining) it, we sin just so. If we present sin as something to be desired, we commit the sin of the Serpent with Eve (Gen. 3:4-5,14-15). The sin which Christ condemns is, carefully considered, a sin of intent and desire, of wanting to do that which we ought not to do, of indulging that desire. You will note that Christ does not direct His condemnation towards the conception of murder, towards the mechanical scheming of it; He directs His condemnation instead towards the anger underlying the scheming. In other words, He doesn’t condemn knowing how to murder somebody but does condemn desiring to murder somebody.

I said already that we can present sin as desirable, and I said that doing so was wrong. You can see the reasoning why, now, and I hope you agree, but you doubtless have an observation you think I really should have included earlier⁴: we can portray sin without seeking to make it desirable. Indeed, sin may be depicted not as desirable but as reprehensible, not as a fantasy of the author but as a recognition of a regrettable reality of human nature.

Very often, of course, the character who commits the sin within the story is rather pleased with themselves in that action. The murderer feels himself quite justified in dissolving the occasion for his financial ruin in a vat of acid and using the teeth as part of his new dental prop. To the character, the sin is desired, not only desired but accomplished to the same level of reality as the character, the secondary creation he ‘lives’ within. These actions and attitudes by the characters do not, however, implicate the author in their desire for sin. In most significant cases the story immediately or over the remainder of the story can exhibit a disapproval of the sin, whether through a narrator, the judgement occurring within the story, the tone of the story, or a character internal to the world. Thus Lydia’s foolishness in Pride and Prejudice is reproached in the story, both by the recognition afforded it by Elizabeth and the deleterious consequences her vice has upon her and her kin.⁵

Unfortunately for this solution to our present moral dilemma, stories simply do not have enough room to fit the full clarification of the moral status of all parts of themselves within their right borders. Further, characters cannot simply remain utterly flawless outside of the specific foibles of the main characters which are to be addressed in the story’s progress. Side characters must, in imitation of life, possess flaws; main characters must often have faults not directly a part of their main difficulties; and the general nastiness of the world can often not be entirely avoided. For these difficult cases, small as they generally are, two solutions must suffice: first, some implication may be given of their moral disconformity with the author by the tone of the story- which details are chosen and how the world or characters react-, and second, the readers must be trusted to have some moral compass for themselves and the sense to realize that the author’s moral compass, as shown in the great arcs of the book, extends to the minor foibles the story has not had time to address. In other words, we have to have some faith in our readers, while still taking care we haven’t portrayed the sin as a good or desirable action or desire.

These sins, then, are not wrong to depict; they are wrong, however, to desire or to cause to desire. We must be careful in writing not to engage in fantasizing about sin, in indulging our vicious desire, be careful moreover not to seek to lead others into doing so.⁶ Characters may do so, but we should be certain that it is the characters indeed and not we ourselves.

Having discussed the two subtypes of the ‘innately wrong’ subcategory, I’m going to ask you to hang onto the cliff until next week, where we’ll consider gore, marriage, and some general aspects of the whole affair- realism and age appropriateness, before wrapping it all up.

God bless.

1 – It’s like Arson, Murder, and Jay-Walking, except it’s actually Cursing, Rape, Slasher Film and Wedding.

2 – We’ll be addressing this last one later, as possibly having the weakest case for wrong doing.

3 – Technically we do that regularly, in a sense, as finite beings cannot give the weight to His name which it deserves. The sin, though, lies in doing so when it is in our ability as creatures to provide it more respect than we do.

4 – An earlier draft actually did include this observation in the preceding paragraph’s third sentence.

5 – If the story is written with a truly unreliable narrator, one so insane that reality is impossible to deduce from his narration even in its broad strokes, this may be hard. I admit to not having a solution there; I’ve never tried or wanted to try.

6 – Which is not to say they won’t. Given the human soul’s amazing capacity for sin, even the most innocent of stories could provide a reader the opportunity for sin.