I've been thinking a lot about the mystery novel lately, and I've come to believe that it--of all genres--most accurately represents the way the world ought to be.  The hope that we Christians ought to be living under.  "There is nothing hidden that will not be disclosed."  Justice will be done.

And in a broader sense, it connects us to sin.  While mysteries make a clear distinction between good and evil, often it is the people who you least expect who are the criminals, and there fore mysteries remind us that we too could be criminals.  We are not somehow "too good" for sin.  Father Brown (in G.K.Chesterton's awesome short stories) solves every crime by imagining what would drive him to commit a crime.  We are criminals, we deserve death; and though our sins may never be as socially damaging as, say, murder, every single one of us has damaged relationships and committed murder in our hearts.

Suffice it to say, mysteries represent what no other genre can: the enacting of justice, the uncovering of sin, the applying of motive, the implication that I too could be standing in front of the judge hearing my sentence: the need for justice and the absolutely desperation for the blood of Jesus to cover my wretched sin.

All right, lest I get too theologically heavy-handed, I mostly read mysteries for pure enjoyment.  I'll write up reviews of several of my recent favorites (and some duds I came across in my quest for the next Dorothy L. Sayers).

"We had that bastard kicked out of the game.  Unnecessary roughness," says the coach, whose entire knowledge of coaching is culled from sports movies.

Now, it was made quite clear to me at the Christian writer's conference that any strong language is not tolerated by any of their Christian publishers.  So, shall I rewrite my coach's line?

"We had that dummy kicked out of the game."

"We had that loser kicked out of the game."

"We had that--"

Okay, none of those lines work.  The conference suggestion was to replace actual curse words with phrases like "he cursed."  So, my coach's line could be replaced with: "He proceeded to call the player an unrepeatable name."  But the problem is, I'm writing in the person of my main character, Jay, who would have absolutely no problem repeating "bastard."  In fact, he might say it himself sometime in the rest of the novel.

The problem is, my characters make my book unpublishable in the Christian market, and my message makes my book unlikely to be published anywhere else.  So what's a starving artist to do?

So it's the public library at 7:00 in the evening, and at the computers across from me, a couple of punk teens are dropping F-words and various other four-letter bombs every other word, and laughing hysterically about knowing how to make Trojan viruses and other things.  And I'm trying hard to write an email and considering calling my mom (the librarian) over to kick those punks out.  And I was trying desperately hard to be compassionate and it wasn't working very well, because when confronted with the lowest of fallen humanity, my first instinct is to hold my breath and keep my precious self-righteousness intact.

But who are these boys, and why were they so desperate to hang out at the library?  Probably because their homes are unpleasant places to be, their parents irresponsibility or abuse has made their lives miserable, and the public library is the safest place they know to be.  And why were they so ticked off when my mom finally told them their hour was up?  Probably because all they know of authority is people who hate them trying to control their lives.  They've ceased to be tenderhearted, because when you have no hope in the Lord the best you can do is barricade yourself behind a facade of humor or hardness.

So why do I look down my nose at them, simply because circumstances have not reduced me to their precarious position?  And how do I begin to soften my own heart so that I look for ways of serving them instead of instinctively wishing they were gone?