A Christian Response to the Inhumanity of Transgressive Fiction

I’ve written in the past about dishonesty at work among the avant-garde. I say this because the “art” which often emerges from such waters is rarely objectively beautiful, technically brilliant, or conceptually ingenious. Rather, its power seems to lie in its ability to shock and flatter. But there is another kind of deceptive exhibition that appeals not so much to our vanity as it does to our fascination with the dark and the depraved. It appeals to the same impulse that welcomed gladiators, public torture trials, and the Hostel movies. Though “art” of this variety has traditionally either been banned...