(From a review of Like a Ship on the Sea on Goodreads)

Some might even be downright uncomfortable with Kellyn’s trademark bluntness in certain matters, especially if you’re a newcomer to her books, but regardless, she always handles it in a tactful, appropriate way, because these are matters worth discussing!

(From a review of Like a Ship on the Sea on Goodreads)

And this brings me to my next point, which relates to WHY I choose this approach.

#4: Sin is not art.

Sin is not beautiful. Not even achingly beautiful.

Sin is drudgery. Sin is ugly. Sin is not worthy of our focus.

The Lord is the Creator of the best art! He is beautiful, and He should be our main focus.

This sort of emo-teen idea that there’s something cool about being “morally gray” or a bad boy, that by becoming “good” we lose our edge or personality, is ridiculous. We are at our most individualistic and our most interesting when we’re following God’s commands, when we’re “being good.”

And sadly, Christians do not do a good job portraying this, perhaps because we don’t understand it. One of the most frustrating aspects of my childhood was reading Elsie Dinsmore and watching every “rebellious & disobedient” character get formed into a little Elsie clone.

Why? Because Martha Finley seemed to think because Elsie was the essence of goodness, to write good characters, she just had to copy and paste. I think there was a character named Lucinda (or some form of Lucy … Lucella? Or am I thinking of someone else entirely? Anyways, I think her last name was Raymond, right? She had the … ship captain dad who married Elsie’s daughter? Gosh, this series was so complicated) who in particular upset me, because she lost her actual personality in exchange for “being good” and reforming from some of her rather bratty traits.

But the truth is, even when we’re deep in our sins, we’re often accidentally reflecting aspects of God’s creation in us. We can’t help it. Oftentimes, what our extremism turns into a sin may eventually be tamed into a strength (maybe you’ve overbearing and that turns into strong leadership skills), or we may pursue the opposite (maybe you’re a liar and you become endlessly dedicated to the truth).

The things I’ve experienced in the past – for instance, typecasting myself into sinful situations (“I’m unfeeling; I lack empathy; I’m too blunt; there’s no way I can change this about myself; I’m despairing of ever being a ‘proper Christian'”) – have all returned to me (“I’m not going to give into this idea that individuality means you can’t follow the Lord when really our true individuality can only be found in Him … and I don’t want anyone else to, either!”).

Because our pain has purpose. Honestly, it often has roots in our calling; it is the preparing grounds for something greater. That tragic backstory, the effects of sin … in the end, the Lord can turn what the world, what sin, meant for evil … and make it good.

And here’s what the means: as a character moves through their arc and, in Christian fiction, comes closer to God (or comes closer to their “truth,” in all fiction), they will become more and more themselves. They will blossom before your eyes!

That’s probably one of my favorite bits of Like a Ship on the Sea … both Cassie and Patrick really become their true selves as they pursue God more passionately. This is how it should be. We should all be becoming more brilliant with joy, with personality, and with strength as we become more like Christ.

It’s not prosperity gospel because it ain’t about physical prosperity. A strong, joyful, godly character (meaning “the mental and moral qualities distinctive to an individual”) is something no one can take away from you, unlike physical blessings like wealth, good health, et cetera.

That said, although I don’t believe that sin is pleasant, and though I believe we should be honest in our portrayal … there is something powerful about knowledge. Being straightforward is good … but only if you’re not spending so much time in darkness that you don’t leave room for hope.

Only if you’re causing readers to ask the right questions, answering them in the right way (as much as is appropriate for your story, genre, and audience), and not choosing to drag their minds through 100,000 words of “this life sucks.”

#5: Knowledge is power, and power must be used wisely.

We don’t want to use our portrayal of sin to cause people to sin. That’s a common concern I hear amongst Christian writers and readers, and I get it. I really do. And that’s why I’m writing this section.

A lot of this comes down to audience. Discussing sexual topics with children is inevitably going to raise more questions than answers. You don’t want a ten-year-old coming to their mom after reading their book and going, “Hey, so, this author said that sexual pleasure in marital relationships is good and holy … what is sexual? What is pleasure? What is marital? What is relationships?”

And though as a writer, you want to be raising questions … those are probably not the questions a ten-year-old needs to be asking. Actually, a ten-year-old (as noted) will not have the words to ask these questions, and I think that’s going to lead to them NOT ASKING THEM which is … not good. Because you are essentially causing the exact opposite problem of what I hope to achieve my books – creating repression. We don’t want repression. It’s bad, even (or especially?) for Christians.

We want to inspire only what will be actionably helpful to our audience. We want to ask the questions out there in the open, at the front of our minds, rather than letting them mill about and become sinful in the silent, dark places.

And, at least in my opinion, there are some things that will never be helpful.

To use a specific example, if you’re writing out a sexual scene where you walk the reader, no matter how mature, play by play, through a married couples’ sexual activities, you are not going to be helpful because – though it’s not a sin for these concepts to exist, to acknowledge that they exist, or for the characters to do them – it is a sin to engage in another person’s sex life, even if they are fictional. Plus it’s bad for the brain!

That said, different audiences are going to react differently to different things that are not in and of themselves wrong or anti-Biblical, but may be wrong for the audience depending on how you write them.

For a ten-year-old, having two characters frankly discuss their sexual relationship would probably be harmful no matter how you spin it. A ten-year-old is not ready for that knowledge.

For a twenty-year-old who is on the verge of entering adulthood and dating, it might help them understand why sexual intimacy in marriage is so much better than any other variation that the world can come up with … or it might cause them to stumble as they desire the relationship these characters have & (of their own volition) choose to engage in other sexual activities to chase that feeling.

For a twenty-five-year-old navigating the first years of their marriage, it might be encouraging to see a couple caring about their sexual relationship and prizing it enough to make it their focus. It might have them asking hard questions about how their own relationship is progressing, or how it’s not progressing.

But even a twenty-five-year-old (or an eighty-five-year-old) may have personal convictions, and if they read your book, no matter how carefully written, if it makes them uncomfortable because it violates their personal convictions, they’re not going to like it. As a reader, I hope they’ll have the common sense to take responsibility for having read the book, but some of them are not going to. Some of them are going to react with a, “This book is not Christian enough because of XYZ reasons!”

And I get why. I know that icky feeling of “that shouldn’t have been in my mind” well. I understand how it makes you want to lash out and assign blame. And we can’t avoid that as Christian fiction authors, universally speaking, because everyone has different levels of comfort.

So here’s what you do to try to mitigate (though not eliminate) these effects as an author writing about tough themes for a Christian audience.

It all comes down to appropriate marketing.

But the reader needs to have the personal responsibility of not reading the book if it’s going to harm them, too! Let’s look at that twenty-year-old again. If she, unmarried and inexperienced, would find sexual discussions, no matter how gently written, to be harmful, why is she reading books that feature sexual discussions?

Your only responsibility as an author is to accurately market, but beyond that, if the reader hops into the story without any context and expects it to perfectly fit her needs, and it doesn’t, then she can put the book down … or she can continue to read it and sin. And that’s not really within the author’s control.

That’s why I rarely market my books as “clean” anymore. I want to do my due diligence. And I usually try to put content warnings wherever I can and make it clear with the cadence of the blurb and so on that this is a work of adult fiction. One should hopefully, therefore, expect adult topics of conversation.

Because at the end of the day, we don’t MAKE other people sin as long as we are not deliberately urging people to go against their convictions. That is what the Bible specifically advises against.

We don’t want to invite our friends over to dinner and force them to eat snails if they don’t believe in eating snails. We wouldn’t drag a person who wasn’t comfortable with the subjects discussed in our novels to a book club or hand them a copy if they had specifically said they would not read the novel. And we don’t judge them for that.

So basically, “not causing someone to stumble” would entail:

• Not trying to talk people out of their personal convictions or imply that their personal convictions are wrong. (Yes, even if they wear jeans! YOU STILL CAN’T JUDGE THEM.)
• Not trying to cause believers to stumble on the path they have chosen. (Yes, even if you really want to share your great snail souffle with them, YOU MUST RESTRAIN YOURSELF. Even if your snail souffle is life-changing. Even if it’s the one thing standing between them and greatness. PUT DOWN THE PAN. It’s none of your business!)

A helpful way of thinking about it?

God wants us to help other Christians stick to their personal convictions—even if we don’t feel personally convicted about that thing being sinful. We should always avoid tempting fellow believers into sinning (Romans 15:1).

For example, let’s say your friend has a problem with a certain kind of music. Maybe that music is not inherently evil. But if it is something that would cause your friend to stumble in his faith, it is your duty as a Christian friend to make sure that you are not responsible for exposing him to that kind of music.

(see this full article)

But … here’s another way of viewing the stumbling block situation that may shed light on why I’m not too worried about that with my novels. Essentially, the issue is not “if someone thinks it’s a sin, you must stop doing it immediately!” … it’s “if you’re going to drag someone else who believes otherwise into it, it becomes a sin.”

In the age of the internet, when everything is so wildly accessible to everyone, it must go both ways. The reader is responsible for following their own convictions. The author is responsible for accurately disclaiming when sensitive topics are discussed in their work or on their platforms.

Let’s take this to the logical extreme. If you are going out for a night of drinks on the town (or, because you’re a Christian, a couple drinks that won’t lead to drunkenness, which is not forbidden in the Bible!), and you invite a friend who is against drinking period, but you say to her, “We’re going to be drinking, and you don’t have to come, and if you do, you don’t have to drink,” and that friend still comes, and they sin by going against their convictions and drinking … Well, that’s not wrong.

But if you said to your friend, “You can come along and not drink” and then spent the next couple hours cajoling them to drink … you’d better line up to take some blame. And if you said, “You should come along and drink because your convictions are silly,” well, BLAME. BLAME ON YOU. BLAME ON YOUR WHOLE FAMILY. BLAME ON YOUR COW.

YOU, my friend, YES YOU, have become the bad kind of Proverbs friend. And that sucks. I wish you’d stop. Because evil companions are annoying, and I’d like to invite you to be unfriended.

That said, the fact that you drink when your friend chooses not to does not make you a bad individual. (Maybe I should’ve used a less controversial one, but meh. Drinking in small amounts is not wrong. Jesus made wine. There. I said it. And no, again, this is not to say that your personal convictions are wrong, BUT you owe me the same benefit of the doubt about my personal convictions as I owe you. My personal convictions – despite having had one alcoholic beverage in my entire life and it had like 0.00000001% alcohol – are that it’s not sinful.) Drinking in front of your friends? Teasing them for not drinking? Sending photos of you enjoying a margarita on the beach and looking sooooo much cooler than them? Yeah, let’s put a stop to that RIGHT NOW.

That’s not friendship. That’s bullying. We don’t like bullies.

And this applies to your behavior as an author. Don’t comment on reviews or have a pity party with your friends if someone’s convictions vary from yours. Don’t expect everyone to like your book. Don’t get all up in arms and blame the reader when they feel like your book doesn’t line up with their personal standards.

Sure, they could’ve worded it more nicely. But reviews are all about personal convictions and standards and enjoyment. And guess what? Even if they could’ve avoided it, even if you did your level best to market accurately and disclaim appropriately, there are going to be readers who just didn’t pay attention.

And I get it. It sucks. Every single launch I have features at least a half a dozen readers who are not my target audience talking about how my books overstepped their boundaries. And that’s really good, because we need all types of Christians in this world, and I’m grateful for them.

Further, it helps me tighten up my marketing for next time, understand what I might disclaim better, and helps readers who feel similarly to avoid my books.

Sometimes they state it in ways that I know will not be helpful to most readers – because believe it or not, “fade to black sex scene” has a lot of different meanings from “lusty kissing & undressing leads to the couple falling onto the bed dot dot dot” (I don’t think I’ve ever written anything remotely like this?) to “they kissed once & then the camera shut off but now she’s pregnant so maybe you can guess what happened” (… guilty as charged) – but that’s okay because if God wants my books to be read, He’s going to make it happen. One review or a dozen is not going to make a difference in God’s plan. In fact, it’s a part of God’s plan!

So basically, all y’all CHILL OUT. Everyone’s freaking out. STOP. FREAKING. OUT. *SHAKES YOU* YOU. WILL. BE. OKAY. WHY DON’T YOU BELIEVE EVERYTHING WILL BE OKAY WHEN I SAY IT IN THIS CALM AND REASSURING VOICE!!?!?!

Anyways, you get my point.

Also, all y’all keep talking about Christian fiction books that are too smutty, and just asking for a friend, but like, where do you find these …? Okay, okay, I’m joking. I don’t want to read Christian smut.

But man, am I curious … like, what does it entail? I guess I watched Redeeming Love, but I haven’t read the book, so is the book just like … is it the same? But like, those scenes in a book might’ve been easier to pull off because having Angel be unclothed in a book is a heck of a lot different than having her be unclothed in a movie, so like? Was it …?

Never mind. I don’t want to know.