A Moral Mess

On Monday morning everyone in my fiction writing class received an email from a classmate who is offended by class material. In the email she pleaded for our prayers and support as she takes her complaint to our professor, and the department ombudsmen, and the dean of the college. The class material is comprised of short stories from an anthology of top-notch writers as well as student short stories. My story, "No Red at Night" was, without question, part of the content that offended her. 

My initial reaction is to feel sorry for this girl. I almost envy her. I would love to have had such an easy life that bad words and sexual references send me into fits. As it stands, I have not had an easy life, and as it stands, I am offended by people who wish to throw rose colored sheets over the hard things in a human existence. I think that people who force a tidy view of life deny God. 

In my writing I want to ask questions like, Why do we destroy our bodies? Why do adolescent girls make-out with creepy boys? How should we judge the morality of people who live in intense poverty? What makes a family? Is there an appropriate way to grieve? Is it fair to ask people to be responsible when their lives are falling apart? If the most powerful way to ask the question I want to ask is to show a guy putting his hands under a girls clothes, then that it what I'm going to do. This isn't a tidy world. There is no immaculate conception. We are people of the earth, created from the dust and then asked to be moral. And it's a mess. 

We are asked by our church leaders to read the best books. Shakespeare, Chaucer...talk about a messy world. I'm not even close to as crude as those old dudes can be. Our prophet and the quorm of the twelve quote Shakespeare and Chaucer all the time, why? Because language and story are powerful ways to learn to be moral. And our very best defense of story are the scriptures themselves. God could have sent down a handbook with all the rules but he instead gave us the Bible and The Book of Mormon which is narrative, literature and story.

I am not in any kind of trouble for my story and many members of the class have emailed Little Miss Offended saying that they don't agree with her viewpoint. One of the best letters came from my friend Kate. Check out her letter at www.k8fin.blogspot.com and then watch for my collection of stories this coming spring. They will be published online as my thesis project. Be prepared to get hot and bothered and ask tough questions along with me.