Rose eyed the rattling quiver with uncertainty. She backed her head away as the arrow shafts neared.
Stop. Slow down. Give her chance to assess.
She craned her neck, gave the strange new objects a sniff. A first step in desensitization.
A short while later, I stood a couple paces in front of her while her trainer held the reins. I shot a target several meters ahead of us. Thwack went arrow into foam. Rose didn’t like that. We ended the session there; this process would take time.
Rose was a Boerperd-Friesian crossbreed, stocky yet tall. A soft, dark coat and a sweet personality. But like every creature on this fallen earth, she was imperfect. She knew fear well, and anything new seemed to deserve suspicion. To prepare her for mounted archery, desensitization to the rattling quiver, twanging bowstring, and target-thwacking arrows was needed.
We never completed the training process. Sadly, Rose passed to African horse sickness not long after we started. A gentle giant lost. But we had made progress, little by little.
Crumbling Morality
Little by little. That’s how desensitization works. Not just with horse training, but even with ourselves. Our moral values.
Surely there was a time in your life when hearing a cuss word left a pang deep inside. Swearing is wrong, your parents may have taught. Then you grew up. Heard more. Read more. Perhaps said more. The pang shrunk each time.
Look at the violence and sexual wickedness saturating societies. The immorality didn’t drop on us out of the blue. It’s grown and is growing. Books, movies, and songs with wicked content have been around for a long time, but the amount seems to grow. What most considered questionable a decade ago is far more accepted today.
How does this happen? Little by little. Like Rose leaning in for sniff, we inch forward into the thing that once set warning bells ringing. We take a step on the slippery slope. We read the story with its grotesque violence. We play the video game, listen to the song, follow the influencer, watch the popular show.
Integrity Matters
The integrity of the upright guides them,
but the crookedness of the treacherous destroys them.Proverbs 11:3 (ESV)
Attitudes affect decisions. Actions have consequences. By yielding ground in the war for righteousness, we allow evil to grow.
The books of Psalms and Proverbs are packed with examples and warnings of wickedness. Indeed, much of the Old Testament demonstrates the somber, society-breaking results of people wandering the slippery slope rather than walking in the ways of righteousness and integrity. New Testament epistles encourage us to walk uprightly and avoid ungodliness.
Let us not take the warnings and commands of Scripture lightly. Immorality destroys. Integrity matters.
Guarding Hearts and Telling Stories
Do not enter the path of the wicked,
and do not walk in the way of the evil.
Avoid it; do not go on it;
turn away from it and pass on.Proverbs 4:14-15 (ESV)
We are told to guard our hearts with all vigilance (Proverbs 4:23). Vigilance. That implies intentional awareness to a threat. Not taking those steps of desensitization.
How can we apply that in storytelling?
First, say “no” to corruptive influences. Don’t read that book. Don’t consume that media. This can be tough. Taking up your cross often means leaving other things, tempting and entertaining things, behind.
Second, act with integrity. When writing, this means being intentional about not including certain things in your work. My heart breaks when I see figureheads in the Christian writing community encouraging authors to include unveiled, sinful content because that’s just “realistic” or creates “awareness.” Much more can and should be said about this, but we’ll save that for later posts. For now, the point is simply this: don’t compromise your integrity (or your reader’s) through what you write.
Finally, cultivate what is good. Look to Scripture. Listen to truthful sermons. Read good books. Value wholesome fellowship. Above all, be intentional about your relationship with Jesus, for ultimately it is through Him and by the Holy Spirit that we can walk and tell stories with integrity (1 Corinthians 1:30).
The night is far gone; the day is at hand. So then let us cast off the works of darkness and put on the armor of light.
Romans 13:12 (ESV)
