One Hundred Day Creative Challenge Day 80: Scary Writing

I’ve just finished a novel that scared me. Not in a horror movie/suspense/edge-of-the-cliff sort of way. It scared me because it’s about an issue that is important to me, and to many others. But it’s controversial. It’s controversial because it’s an issue people are polarised over.

Grace is a seventeen year old girl who thinks she may be a lesbian, but she’s not sure, so she’s questioning. Her mother is a conservative Christian. Her friends have a variety of faith perspectives. Her dad doesn’t deal with ‘girl problems’ that well. Gay and straight bullies torment her. Her mum tries to get her cured.

It’s not an unusual situation in our society. However, when faith and sexuality are spoken about in the same sentence many people are on opposite ends of a spectrum. I don’t mean the sexuality spectrum, I mean the opinion, belief and values spectrum.

It’s a hard topic to discuss with people from opposite ends of the spectrum in the same room.

There’s for and against, right and wrong and seemingly not a lot of civil discussion in the middle.

I’m scared because of the controversy I know this book will arouse.

It eats me up that people are choosing between God and sexuality. Church and sexuality.

It’s important to me that we have a civil and honest and real and compassionate conversation about people. Not about ‘the issue’, but the story.

Each extreme of the opinion spectrum have passionate and valid arguments about ‘the issue’, but in the meantime, people are suffering. And from my faith perspective I’m asking, ‘Is any of this bringing people closer to God?’

So, I wrote a story about a girl. A girl who is on the fringes of faith, who’s confused about her sexuality and who is being pushed and pulled in different directions. Some are pulling her towards God and some are pushing her away.

If homosexuality is an argument, then I would argue for love and understanding about the difficulty of working out this stuff called life and faith.

If it was a vote, I’d vote for inclusion and love for all.

If it was my son or my daughter I’d say, ‘God loves you and I love you and that’s the way it should be.’

Does that mean I sit at the far left of the opinion spectrum or the far right? No, it means that I want the opinion spectrum to not be a horizontal line, but a circle with God in the middle.

I want us to listen to people’s stories and understand and have compassion no matter which ‘position’ we may take. Because if it’s one person who’s standing in front of you, if it’s one person’s story you’re hearing, if it’s one person’s heart that is struggling, then it’s easier to have empathy. It’s easier to have a hug instead of hate.

That’s scary, important  writing.