The following will appear as the Afterword for my upcoming novel, Decisive Moment. Though it contains a slight hint of the ending, I don’t think it will spoil the story. All the same, you might want to defer its reading until after you finish the novel.

If you know I hold a Christian world-view, after reading Decisive Moment you may ask how I can or why I would want to write such a dark story, one not only devoid of a happy or righteous ending, but one which delves into the shallows – for these, believe me, are not the depths – of human cruelty and depravity. The answer comes in a short sentence. You cannot appreciate salvation unless you understand perdition. In more common vernacular, you cannot know what it costs to be found unless you know what it means to be lost.

While I do not claim this nor any of my works, or the sum total of my writing supplies a comprehensive treatment of the human condition, I do not think it improper or inconsistent with prior Christian authorship to explore the evil side of the fallen world we inhabit. That I often choose to do so in the absence of the typical good guy or even the mostly – a.k.a. flawed – good guy one often finds in much of Christian and non-Christian literature is both a stylistic choice to avoid tired clichés and convenient, facile treatments of how we humans behave toward one another, and a sad, yet incontrovertible admission that many who live in darkness dwell there without the slightest flicker of light. It is also consistent with Biblical teaching that there’s no one righteous, no not one. Even the quintessential good guy and good gal dress in filthy dregs of unrighteousness.

Perhaps your objection now shifts to the wanton use of violence in my work, the bloody nature of it. First, I assure you that this treatment does not aim to glorify or endorse such actions or behavior, but merely to acknowledge they are the natural and logical outflow of a flawed, fallen human nature. And lest we think ourselves more righteous than these cruel characters, let us remember from the Sermon on the Mount how murder involves far more than the bloody act itself.

Second, if you shrink back in horror and repulsion from such representations of evil, count yourself blessed, for your heart yearns for better and purer things. Count yourself blessed indeed since you’ll feel the same way when Jael drives a tent peg through Sisera’s head, when Absalom is murdered while hanging by his hair from a tangled branch or when Romans torture Jesus in the bloodiest of ways.

Should you still object to this reasoning, I will tell you – though not promise, for only my Savior knows whether I shall have enough time and breaths this side of eternity – that I have in mind a novel or two with good guys and gals that do not kill one another with guns and knives, or even tent pegs. I must pre-warn you, however, that you may find it far more shocking when these heroes of the faith fail in spite of their self-acclaimed righteousness, or when they tear at one another though, unlike the bad guys, they should know better and live under, by, and in the power of their Savior’s love.