Assistant Editor Heather von Doehren attempts to answer some commonly asked questions about what Relief is willing to publish.

We receive a lot of questions about why (or sometimes if) we publish works with profanity and “questionable” subject matter.  Questions like…

·         “I was thinking about submitting but I don’t think my work is ‘Christian enough’ for your journal, is that okay” or

·         “What do you consider edgy ?”, or 

·         “What sort of language do you allow?” or

·         “Why would you allow such filth to appear on Christian pages?”

All of these are complicated questions in any venue.  Relief's stance is that we will not censor our authors in an effort to never offend .  Anyone who has spent a lot of time people-pleasing will tell you that there is always someone, somewhere who will be offended by something.  With that said, we don't draw lines. 

A Little Pastor Once Told Me…

I am reminded of something Jarrett Stevens once taught about when the youth/20-somethings in his congregation kept asking him questions about what was acceptable sexually in God's eyes.  The questions he kept getting would range from "Is kissing okay?" or "What about second base?" or "What if we keep our clothes on?" and after this line of questioning, Jarrett smiled and said, "I think you are missing the point." And then he explained that people too often want their churches to draw lines on their bodies like "Everything above this line is okay, and everything below this line is not," but that's not what God designed or intended.  Look at the Song of Songs or in Genesis (hello?  Adam and Eve, naked, doing it like bunnies!).  Like anything that is amazing and worthwhile in life, like friendship, love, sex or even the words we speak, we don’t see a right or wrong, this side or that side, but many varying degrees all contingent upon the circumstances.  The gift of seeing the differences in these circumstances people term “discernment .” God knows what is in people's hearts.  And with careful study and a prayerful spirit, so can we. 

How We Make Distinctions:

When we do consider work that has the potential to offend the “innocent,” we consider always the larger story.   Consider these two scenarios:

1.    A Christian who volunteers willingly and joyfully at a homeless shelter, attends church regularly, prays wholeheartedly, and is very generous with all aspects of her time, dropping whatever she's doing to help a friend, falls down a flight of stairs breaking her hip and screams "F**k!" when she figures out that she can't move and no one will be home to help her for five hours.

2.    A Christian who attends church so he can be seen by his friends, leads the family in prayer at dinnertime, donates money to charity for the tax break, passes a bum on the street and says "You f***ing repulse me!" carefully under his breath so no one hears.

In either case, do you think God will be concerned by the Christian swearing?  I think He'd be more bothered by other things happening in the scene.  But both of these situations you'd find in our journal, uncensored because this kind of stuff really happens.  And in either scene, I believe the swearing is necessary for the storylines and the characterization.  The swearing represents or marks turning points for both.  The first scene, the character loses patience and composure in a moment of extreme pain and in later scenes this first character will use this incidence (her literal fall) as an unconscious justification for a growing spiritual fall—a mark that will be most (perhaps only) noticeable through her language. 

Q: How do you make the reader aware of a loss in faith if the character is unaware? 

A: Show, don’t tell.

No one was there to help her.  Her broken hip means that she is unable to do the things that define her as a Christian.  She is now struggling in every sense.  But, without the character swearing—here and in future scenes—the writer would have to explain this change in her character through the narrative, rather than one simple slip of the tongue.  This is what we’ve been talking about all along by show, don’t tell, or “surprise us ,” or “stop moralizing! ”  In the second example, yes, the swearing is condemnable but necessary for the same reasons that the swear is necessary in the first scene.  It demonstrates what is in the character's heart in these private/public moments in a way that exposition would make cheap and cliché. 

We examine each and every submission like this (that’s why it takes so freakin’ long to respond).  If the swearing (or other "unchristian" acts) is gratuitous, unnecessary, or contradicts overall messages in scripture…we reject the piece without a second thought.  But we won't dismiss a piece just because someone said a bad word.  People swear.  People sin.  We can't ignore it or hide from it.  In fact, oftentimes the moments where people do find God or draw closer to God are in these “fallible” moments.  These are the kind of stories we're interested in publishing.  And on the other side, people lose faith, pull away from God, and ignore the consequences of their own behavior.  These stories are also something we're interested in publishing.  And on top of all of this, Christians are far from perfect.  Just because we are "saved" does not mean that we are safe from worldly ramifications—but I have a feeling that many non-Christians think we should be perfect.  And when we aren't (hello…it’s because no one can be this side of heaven) they perceive (extrapolate?) the imperfections in character as an imperfection in the religion, or worse, in God.  I don't think Christians who censor or hide their own moments of imperfection do any good to this false perception of "perfection."  And worse, non-Christians reading stories of unrealistically perfect Christians could perceive themselves as unworthy because of their own constant struggle.  I don’t think that God loves us in spite of our sin; I think He just loves us.

What we are NOT saying.

Yes, there are many places for safe and censored writing.  Walk into any Christian bookstore and you’ll find it.  We, on the other hand, do NOT belong in a Christian bookstore.  To reference EMINEM, I wouldn’t let my own daughter read us either…not at least until she (that’s the hypothetical she by way) was older.  So with that in mind, Relief is not for everyone.  But it does put us in a strange place: we are too secular for Christian publishing and too Christian for secular publishing.  But that is what makes this Relief.