Today’s link has a particularly provocative title for a Christian blog post, but it is worth consideration: I went to a Strip Club. (It seems common to recap, if not run through, the content of a link when one posts it to a blog. That just seems a little redundant to me. I’d rather recommend the link and add my own thoughts. Sorry if that seems a little blunt at times.)
A while back I was asked by a group of pastor’s wives to go with them to strip clubs. That sentence alone sounds strange. But hang with me. At first I was a little hesitant. And not for reasons you…
Source: I went to a strip club | just a jesus follower
As I was reading this, I thought about Christian fiction-writers walking into a strip club for research or something. Maybe they’d rather paint it lewdly from their own imagination. But at the heart of the article is something poignant and I think especially relevant to writers: walking into the gritty real for the sake of the souls that call it home.
Call me crazy, but considering actual people, even in hypothetical situations, is an actively good force on me, given to me by God.
The truth is that all of us live in a fallen, sinful place, surrounded—and surrounding others—with sin, sorrow, heartbreak, and need. Then there is that persistence of God’s undeserved love and grace, our call to love our neighbors as ourselves, opportunities to speak or help, and all those lingering vestiges of humanity that simply appeal to us in body and soul to stir up our compassion, imagination, camaraderie, etc.
Writing about darker subjects can still reach out—and reach in. People may not understand it. People may demand you be “more . . .”, “better . . .”, different, but maybe they just don’t remember to see the people who really may be involved, or helped, by what you do. People for whom Christ died.
Maybe your main stream is more like a drying creek bed and maybe that’s ok! Consider the strip club and other places where there are people who could use attention, some light, and God’s mercy.
May God work through you.