Christians are too precious with their art. Too sanitized. Too nice. Somewhere along the line, wegot it in our heads that Christian storytelling means Hallmark-level purity — tidy lives, cleanstruggles, and a Jesus with a fresh cut beard and no dirt on his hands.
And because of that, we’ve started spring cleaning our stories. We bleach out the dark, the painful, the human. We pull punches where the Bible clearly does not. Some Christians even skip past parts of Scripture that are “too violent”— like the rape of Tamar, the incest of Lot, or the fall and death of Absalom.
We pretend those stories don’t exist, or worse, we retell them in a G-Rated version that wouldn't even excite a kindergarten Sunday school. Instead, we get “struggles” like the quirky girl who trips over her feet, spills her pumpkin spice latte, and gets caught in the arms of a tall, brooding barista who secretly reads his Bible. Their biggest problem? A miscommunication. Maybe an ex shows up and there's a sad ukulele montage.
Don’t get me wrong — there’s a place for the everyday kind of story. Sometimes it is nice to sit back and enjoy a “fine and dandy” story. But the problem is: that’s all it is. Fine and dandy. Overly polite. And deeply disconnected from the kind of stories God actually tells. Because the real world is messy. Violent. Heavy with sin, and scarred with sorrow. The greatest story — the story of Christ — is one of war. A brutal, bloody fight between light and darkness. There’s a dragon on the loose, and he’s not interested in the charming banter of white washed mall-town romances. He devours. He enslaves. And we need to tell that story.
When we take the darkness out of our stories, we minimize the need for salvation. We forget why the Prince came in the first place. If there’s no evil, why do we need redemption? If there’s no blood, why the Cross? If our villains are just mildly annoying people who need to learn to communicate better, where does Christ come in?
Christ didn’t come into a pastel-painted world. He stepped into the grime of Roman-occupied Israel, into a nation weary from oppression, into a history dripping with betrayal, violence, and generational sin. And He didn’t flinch. He got His hands dirty. He wept. He bled.
Our storytelling should follow suit.
If we want to tell stories that resonate with truth — Christian truth — then we need to stop being afraid of the dark. We need to name evil. We need to let our villains be villains and let our heroes be broken and bleeding and in desperate need of grace. We need to write in the crack and the shadows and the raw edges of life, not just the safe corners.
That doesn’t mean indulging in gore or glorifying sin. We’re not aiming for shock value or “gritty for gritty’s sake.”
But we should be honest about the consequences of the Fall. About what sin
does to people. About what grace has to overcome. And in doing so, we can tell a better Gospel— one that actually feels like good news, because it meets people in their pain, not just their Pinterest boards.
We’re in a real fight. Against a real dragon. And thank God — we have a real Knight who came, not with witty banter and perfect teeth, but with a cross on His back and a crown of thorns on His head.
So Christians — put the violence back in. Tell the truth. And let the Light shine where it’s needed most: in the darkness.
