Keeping the Dog Poop Out of Our Brownies

Imagine I bring you a plate of brownies. They are delicious looking, cut in perfect little squares, still warm from the oven, sprinkled with a touch of powdered sugar. I hand you the plate and the warm, moist aroma causes you to start salivating. Then I say, “Oh, before you eat any, you should know that I dropped a little piece of dog poop in the mix when I was making them. It was just a little piece of poop and shouldn’t affect the taste much. You probably won’t even notice it’s there. Bon appétit!”

So tempting! (Photo: Food Network)

As you probably already know, I stole this analogy. I’m not sure who originally came up with it, but it sure is a good one. It’s usually used to explain to teenagers why their parents don’t want them listening to music or seeing a movie that only has a little bit of bad stuff in it. The idea is that if you won’t eat a brownie with a only a little piece of dog poop in it, why would you listen to a song or watch a movie with only a little bit of immorality?

I think this same analogy works for us as artists and writers. Over the years, I’ve often found myself tempted to drop just a little piece of dog poop in my work. It sounds ridiculous when I say it like that, but it’s true.

You see, I most often write fiction and most of my characters are teenagers. I’ll be writing along and ask myself, “What would a real teenager say or do under these circumstances?” The answer is often that they would respond with profanity, vulgarity, and immorality. Not all teenagers, of course. There are some amazing adolescents out there that keep themselves clean even in the most difficult of situations. But I’ve taught high school for eleven years. I’m not even remotely naïve to what spews from many teenager’s mouths. There have been days at school where I wished it were possible to remove my brain and bleach it to get the memory of the things I heard out.

Does that mean that because a real teenager might say or do these awful things, I should portray it that way in my work? Of course not. Ephesians 4:29 tells us, “Let no corrupt communication proceed out of your mouth, but that which is good to the use of edifying, that it may minister grace unto the hearers.” This applies as much to our work as it does to our conversations with our family and friends.

Anyone can see that they don’t want to have anything to do with the dog poop on the back lawn without having to go out with a knife and fork to eat it. Likewise, it doesn’t take a very talented writer/artist to find a way to show how debased a character might be without making the reader/viewer ingest filth.

I will be the first to admit that in the past, I have sprinkled a fair amount of dog poop into my work under the pretext of “keeping it real.” However, in more recent years, as I’ve learned to rely on prayer and the Spirit more and more in my work, I’ve found that it’s quite possible to keep it real and keep it clean. They are not mutually exclusive ideas no matter how much some writers and artists might try to convince you otherwise. We can tell the truth, even difficult and disturbing truths, without resorting to profanity or graphic scenes of any kind. In fact, I would argue that it will make our work stronger, more unique, more profound, and certainly more palatable as we strive to keep the dog poop out.