Pride, Profanity, and the Lord’s Name

Photo by Alicia Quan on Unsplash

This is Chris Wachter’s post. I posted it for her due to technical difficulties, but she is the writer of this post and she chose the photo.

There is a lot of talk lately about ‘pride’ and a good portion of it is directed at behaviors which should be questioned by Bible believing Christians. But, as a Christian, shouldn’t I be proud as well? Proud of Jesus Christ and what he had done for those who come to believe on him and give him Lordship in their lives. It seems to me, we back away too readily from anything that might cause conflict or controversy, or smack of exclusivity. Reality check. Jesus makes claims like, the only way to the Father is through him. The only way… ponder that. “Jesus said to her, ‘I am the resurrection and the life.^[b] Whoever believes in me, though he die, yet shall he live, ²⁶ and everyone who lives and believes in me shall never die.’” John 11:25-26 ESV. He is the resurrection!

Today I want to talk about the holiness of the name Jesus Christ. As the only son of God the Father, the one who died on the cross to redeem his people from sin and eternal separation from God, his name deserves to be held in highest regard. Right? “…so that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth,” Phillipians 2:10 ESV. So why do we Christians accept without protest when his holy name is used as an expletive in film, TV, and the written word.

Character Depth

“Well, that’s my name too!”

I find character development can either make or break a story. Invincible heroes and everyday villains many can find boring, and people are quick to drop a story if some sort of connection can’t be made. Descriptives like hair color and attitude only go so far as well, and that’s why for me I wanted to go a bit further in my characters than just surface deep attributes.

When it comes to building a character for a story, it helps to have a process in doing it. For me, I want to know why they are there. Do they fulfill a requirement for the story, or are they just fluff? How important are they to the plot? Trying to make everyone have the spotlight is hard, and juggling a cast versus one central person may be that much harder.

What kind of advice can I give other authors?

By: Judge Rodriguez

Judge and Alanna Rodriguez
November 2019

In the last several articles I have written, I have eluded to some of the struggles I have had being an author. Not only being an author, but being a Christian Historical Fiction author at that.

While the genre is rather more selective, you write what you know, right? I have a knowledge of Faith, psychology, history, machinery, being a gunsmith, chemistry, even medicine. Until my wife convinced me to start working on articles with her, even to start writing again, I always stuck to writing and more importantly reading secular fiction. Secular science fiction and fantasy to tell you the truth. Well, that is, except for the times that I would crack open my Bible.

It wasn’t until my wife was able to drag me kicking and screaming by the hair into reading Christian fiction, that I realized there’s some serious talent in use for the genre.

Now, mind you, I knew she was writing a Christian Historical Fiction Western Romance (as if that’s not a mouthful in and of itself, right?). But what she introduced me to were good medieval and western fiction books. I was quite honestly, shocked.

After having spent time reading and developing a rather more distinctive writing style that I can call my own, I have had numerous people ask me, “What advice can you give a budding fiction author that is just beginning?”

Darkness…

As one may have noticed who has read any of my stories, they often (possibly always) involve something of darkness in them. This is indeed part of my life’s focus, near to heart, and part of the fundamental aim of OOM.

It recently occurred to me that dark things can fall into three categories:

Writer Tip: Use a thesaurus, but prudentally or you might get submerged in superfluous jargon

This post was originally posted on Lisa R. Howeler’s blog, Boondock Ramblings.

There are two kinds of writers: writers who overuse the thesaurus and writers who are afraid of using a thesaurus.

Okay, fine.

There are actually three types of writers, with the third type being the writer who actually knows the proper way to use the thesaurus, but those writers don’t need my advice today, so I’m pretending they don’t exist (even though I have slowly become one of those writers, but only with a great deal of practice.)

I was once afraid of the thesaurus. Somehow, I thought I should have all the words in the universe in my head already.