Plenty of my characters swear. I haven't done any sex scenes because most of my characters are either too young to have sex, aren't interested in sex, or have children already. Nothing to do with religious beliefs, I just don't feel the urge to write about my characters porking. The farthest I go is them entering a room and taking their clothes off and cut to next scene/chapter. Well yeah, he's saying, "So long as you don't actually plan to do this in real life, it's fine if your characters do it." If he's cool with it, no problem. Then don't change him. Let him be a disgusting, amoral asshole. Literature would be very boring if everyone were nice and gave puppies and chocolate cakes to everyone they met. Unless you plan to plow half the people in your town, use illegal drugs, torture and kill people you don't like, you're A-OK. It's all fiction. Look, I know what you mean. We think up of things for our characters to do that would make sense and sometimes what we think horrifies us. A few months back I had this disturbing image in my head of a priestess raping my MC in the Temple basement. It was horrid, my stomach began to twist. I felt immense regret for what I was putting my character through. Horrified that this is what the priestess could be capable of. And she was such a nice, friendly character too... ^ Note: I'm never going to write this. Ever. But here's the thing. Just because we think up of the most disgusting characters possible doesn't mean we ourselves are disgusting! George R.R. Martin writes provocative scenes in his work, almost deliberately so to get a reaction out of his readers. Does this mean he wants to do all that in real life? Of course not! He writes them down because that's what makes sense for his characters. Voldemort killed a lot of people, does that mean JK Rowling wants to kill people? No. It's just Voldemort's character. If he started saving people, we'd wonder who the heck this guy was and what he'd do with the real Voldemort. Don't feel guilty. Let your characters come alive. You're merely the narrator, the observer describing what they're doing in detail. You are not them. And as for the torture: Have you not seen The Passion? Let me spoil it for you: It's a two and a half hour long torture scene where every visceral, gory detail are shown in all its graphic display. The guy getting tortured? Jesus Christ.
I'm a Christian but I wrote a short story and I put quite a bit of profanity in it. At the time I was writing this story I was quite angry about something and instead of screaming and yelling all of that profanity. I decided to have a couple of the characters in the story use the profane words that I wanted to use.
While I'm personally an atheist and therefore not necessarily qualified to answer the question, I'd still like to give my input... I personally think that it's completely fine to write about things which go against your personal beliefs - in fact, I'd even encourage it! To be honest, don't we all do that? Doesn't everyone who writes a villain write about things which they themselves probably deem as despicable, regardless of whether the reasons are religious or not? I also think it's more interesting and challenging to write "outside" yourself, to not completely agree with your characters, because otherwise they just become projections of yourself. Since I'm an atheist I don't have religion-based morals, but one example of something I'm opposed to is hunting for sport (or in any other way needlessly harming or killing animals). Despite this, I wouldn't have a problem with putting that in a story, and I also wouldn't necessarily make the antagonist do it for the sake of showing how horrible the character and/or the thing is. So in my opinion it's fine to write about anything regardless of personal beliefs, because it's only fiction!
Your writing, my writing must have purpose. We are sending a message. Like that premise or not, we are. You must ask yourself, "What's the message?" If delivery of the final message takes a dive into real life scenarios, people will relate. If we are filling the pages to make an audience happy, we might need to rethink our strategy. You're not the only one struggling with this question. In my family saga, my MC believes her husband has committed adultery. She wonders if there will ever be an end to adultery. Much, much later in the novel, she will be faced with the decision to pursue a love interest (her husband is now dead) whose marriage has fallen apart. Her dilemma: she never thought she'd be caught in a three-way love triangle. And she's not sure she can do it. A part of her still feels devoted to her cheating dead husband. However, another part of her doesn't want to deny another chance at love. Though this isn't a love story, this woman faces an important dilemma. A moral one for her. For me, I don't think, and not sure I will, need elicit sex to convey their affection or their dilemma. If I do decide to portray a sexual act, I will have her wretched with guilt. Why? Because that's the way we should feel when we are in bed with someone who is married to another. Now, that's real life. I can then use the guilt to push her forward, or I can use her guilt to pivot her in the opposite direction--a newfound freedom from both of them (dead husband and married man) where she's no longer tied down by guilt of being with a married man or anger at her dead husband. In other words, you can use the dilemma you find your character in to drive a point home. But from a Christian's point of view, that point has to be to do things God's way. Otherwise, we've just written another sexy novel and encouraged more evil behavior with the underlying premise that we suffer no consequences for our choices. There's a consequence for everything we say and do. Ask the victim of a cheating spouse. They'll gladly tell you what it cost them. My take on it. Believe me, I'm still tackling this question. Sharing my thoughts with you seems to solidify my position. I thank you for that.
