(C) Daily Kos
This story was originally published by Daily Kos and is unaltered.
. . . . . . . . . .



Failed Writer's Journey: Should Evangelicalism Be Tied to Good Work? [1]

['This Content Is Not Subject To Review Daily Kos Staff Prior To Publication.']

Date: 2025-06-06

Relax, my Protestant friends, the “good work” in the title does not refer to the works vs. faith argument. You can go on pretending that just saying the magic words is sufficient.

I kid, I kid.

Mostly.

This is not entirely related to writing, obviously, but it’s tied to the creation of bad AI slop, which is tangentially related. But first, a story about a plumber.

Back in the 90s, a friend of mine hired a plumber to fix something in her plumbing. She was a single mom at the time, and the plumber she hired changed after he found that out (this was, if memory serves, and it might not, a several days task). Not, mind you, in the way that you might expect. He never talked down about her situation or condescended, and he never tried to hit on her. Instead, he tried to save her soul.

He started talking about his relationship to Jesus and started playing Christian music while he worked and left pamphlets lying around for her and her kid to find (though her kid was a toddler, so I believe the kid mostly used them as confetti for her own amusement), in an obvious attempt to convert her. He also, according to my friend, started paying less attention to his work. When he was done, a few months later she had to have someone come back and fix a part of the problem again. As she said, “If becoming saved makes you that crappy at your job, I can’t afford to find Jesus.”

Which brings me to the slop. 404 Media has a great look at the terrible, terrible AI slop that is fed to evangelicals, especially on Facebook. This stuff is terrible, the worst AI slop imaginable, filled with bizarre images and weird, mutated figures. But these are wildly popular among the evangelical set. Apparently, the quality does not matter, in part because some evangelicals see anything tied to Jesus as quality, and in part because the command to evangelize convinces many that quantity matters more than quality. And that has always struck me as weird. If, as my friend says, finding Jesus means you lose your skills, my savings account cannot afford me to be saved.

Part of this, as the joking tone at the start indicates, probably comes from my Catholic background. Doing good matters much more than saying the right things and pressuring people. If you have to tell me you are a Christian, if I cannot see it from your works, then you probably aren’t much of a Christian. I think a similar argument applies to evangelicalism. If you are terrible at your job, if your poor art or plumbing leaves people feeling poorly about you, then how are they supposed to feel good about the Jesus you are selling? If the art inspired by your religion is AI slop, why would anyone think well of your religion?

Weekly Word Count

Nothing. Zip. Zilch. Zero. Nada.

Been planning the next work and been thinking about the abortion tech thriller. I think it’s not thriller enough, that because the premise I chose to illustrate led to a plot where the thriller aspects, the danger, comes almost entirely in the third act, I don’t have a thriller. I might have a more straightforward, slow burn political story, but that’s not really what I set out to write. It might explain my dissatisfaction with the piece as well. I believe I know how to fix it (start with a different premise to illustrate), but as I have a table read in a couple of Mondays, I am going to hold off on making changes (though I have sketched them out) until I see others’ opinions.

Have a great weekend everyone!

[END]
---
[1] Url: https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2025/6/6/2326301/-Failed-Writer-s-Journey-Should-Evangelicalism-Be-Tied-to-Good-Work?pm_campaign=front_page&pm_source=more_community&pm_medium=web

Published and (C) by Daily Kos
Content appears here under this condition or license: Site content may be used for any purpose without permission unless otherwise specified.

via Magical.Fish Gopher News Feeds:
gopher://magical.fish/1/feeds/news/dailykos/