Okay, so this post is going to be a kind of part two to my first post about gore. Gore and violence often seem to go hand and hand, though you can have gore without violence. For instance a zombie would be considered gore, yet if there are no violent scenes of killing the zombies, then there is no violence.
So, about violence. I know there are believers out there who are adamantly opposed to violence of any kind, but I don't know how many are still out there. When I was younger, I knew quite a few people who did not like violent movies. Violent books, would have been even worse! Now...well....they are not in my circle of friends, but I'm sure there are a plethora of them out there. You can probably tell just from my word choices here, that I do not fall in the "haters of violence". If anything I would rather watch a violent movie than not. The more violence (and sometimes gore), the better!!!
So, obviously, I don't think it is "wrong" to have violence in a Christian novel. In just a minute I will give a few reasons why I think writing anything worth reading (at least for the adult reader) has some good violence, but first I feel it necessary to briefly discuss the term "violence" itself.
Violence is one of those loaded words that people have varying opinions of as well as definitions of...well maybe a better term would be excessive violence. So, pretty much, I think you really can't have a movie or book without some kind of violence. Even cartoons these days have violence to some extent. A fellow schoolmate bullying someone, an ant defending its home against a grasshopper, a cat sword fighting a band of robbers (or an ogre), etc. There is pretty no movie - and probably book either, though I don't read kids books that doesn't have violence or imply violence. This may be far fetched as regards to violence, but lets say I write a children's book that explains the water cycle of rain. The rain drop falls to the ground (a living being - I imagine it would be personified to give the child reader an interest in the water drop), what happens when the drop hits the ground. That might seem violent...but....I don't know....I would agree, this might be pushing the envelope a little....or a lot.
So, lets get on with the real stuff I want to talk about. Most people would definitely say killing, brutal fights, war, and the such would definitely be considered violence. What about the cartoon G.I. Joe? or transformers. They are kids shows, but they do have guns, battles, and the such....granted in G. I. Joe, I am not sure that we ever see anyone get killed, injured yes, but not killed. We do see some fist fights. I would not consider these all that violent. So the violence that people are more likely talking about would be movies like 300, Gladiator, and pretty much almost any realistic war movie. Some might consider movies such as The Avengers, Captain America, and pretty much any hero vs. villain movie violent. Those are probably the violent scenes we are talking about. Some might consider it "excessive violence", most would just consider it violence.
So, is it okay? Yes. Let me use the bible, and make a judgement on God's personality, if you will.....I know....sacrilegious....to assume something about God....to dare to add my own finite moral understanding to a morally in-finite and unfathomable God...but...I'm going to.
So, let's look at the Bible and what God orders IN THE BIBLE. In Exodus, God, himself, tells the Israelite people to go to war. He tells them to KILL everybody. He raises up Judges, in Judges to KILL the oppressors. He blesses war, and supports the violent killing of other nations. These are only a few examples of the violence that God seemed to ordain. God is God, so it stands to reason that he didn't have to have his people go to war, he could have just wiped the "bad guys" out. It seems that if God were so against violence, then he wouldn't have ordered the violence that the nation of Israel was founded upon. I would dare to say God was even the author of violence....you know...slaughtering some poor animals to make clothing for Adam and Eve. Well...at least....that is my opinion.
The whole Bible thing is one reason I don't find violence offensive, but another reason is that it IS THE REAL WORLD. War IS VIOLENT, anger and violence is, sad to say, what seems to fuel the world. Nothing interesting really happens without some kind of conflict, and in the real world that conflict revolves around violence of all kinds. If you want to write realistic fiction, there has to be conflict...and often with that, violence.
The last reason I don't mind violence I touched on in the above paragraph. Basically, nothing interesting ever happens without violence - at least in the books that I like, fantasy mostly, but an occasional sci-fi. I'm sure there are great drama stories like we see on lifetime or the such, but I don't usually watch those. I like flicks like Lord Of The Rings, Star Wars, Indiana Jones, and the such. Action, and even violent. Can't really have action without violence. I don't know, maybe you can.
So that's it. Hope you liked it.