1980s: The King of Horror

Growing up I was fascinated with the supernatural and the unknown. I remember many times as a small boy going to the local library to get books discussing the topics of the Loch Ness monster, ghosts, Bigfoot, the Yeti, Aliens, and more. I also recall begging my parents for books containing a dozen or so ghost stories each year my school had a book fair. There was, and still is, for me something disturbingly attractive about what we do not know for fact, but have only heard through myth and lore. We are drawn to the unknown. When you hear a bump in the night you may cower in fear at first, but curiosity more than likely draws you from the comforts of your bed to investigate. We all know it is almost always nothing, but author Stephen King has tapped into that curiosity of the possibly horrific through his gift of writing.

King has had a successful career selling over 350 million copies of his works with many being transformed into movies or TV mini-series. He is the king of horror.

However, what impact does he have on faith? It seems to me that his greatest contribution is in asking questions. R.W. Bonn lifts up some of these from four of his novels (Don't Stop Believin', 104):

1. "Jesus watches from the wall, but his face is cold as stone. And if he loves me - why do I feel so alone?" (Carrie, 1976)
2. "I don't want Church to be like all those dead pets! I don't want Church to ever be dead. He's my cat! He's not God's cat! Let God have his own cat!" (Pet Cemetery, 1983)
3. "Do you know how cruel your God can be, David? How fantastically cruel?...Sometimes he makes us live." (Desperation, 1996)
4. "If it happens, God lets it happen, and when we say 'I don't understand,' God replies, 'I don't care.' " (The Green Mile, 1996)

Indeed these quotes and his overall focus on the macabre and mysterious leads one to believe that he has some form of belief system. In fact King was raised in the Methodist church, focusing a lot of his formative years of  youth on doctrine. However, it seems as though such intensity burned King out. He currently admits to reading the Bible and believing in God, but has no interest in organized religion. He likes to look at questions more than anything else when it comes to faith.  Bonn writes, "Is Stephen King a Christian? In portraying the religious teachings of his childhood and confronting a suspenseful, horror-filled world where God often seems absent and cruel and the behavior of his followers puzzling if not down right evil, what if Stephen King is asking the same of us?" (105) The answer seems to be yes. 

King addresses the view of a doctrinal God he was given from the perspective of a young child, a scary God with sometimes worse followers, in most of his work. And with such an understanding of the divine, he forces us to answer for our beliefs. What God do you believe in? How do you follow God? What horrors have you released onto creation? As a Lutheran I am the first to admit that I am both a sinner and a saint, a flawed human being, but still called as a disciple and a child of God in baptism. It is living in the messiness of the world where I can let God's love shine forth in the darkness. 

As I am writing this, a friend of mine just texted me voicing frustration over ministering to a difficult pastoral care situation. I will not go into details, but it is a hellish situation that no person should experience. However, as a pastor-to-be I know that God has called me by name, sends me into the shit of life, and equips me to be the divine peace, hope, and comfort in any given situation. News flash everyone...so are you. Discipleship calls us in all of our imperfections to minister to each other, even if that situation is as frightening as a Stephen King novel. Despite what life throws at you, despite the questions without clear cut answers if any at all, despite living in the gray not so black and white world, take consolation that we are a resurrection people who will overcome the scary, the horrific, and the macabre. We will not come out unscathed, we will be beaten and bruised. But we will come out...and that is worth living for.

Peace,

Tom

P.S. Here is a list of my favorites from Stephen King

• Dreamcatcher
• The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon
• The Green Mile Series
• The Shining

Go ahead, make my day

Per a request that came in via email, I am going to look at an actor from the 1970s that has helped define the genre of action film in this decade...Clint Eastwood.

Clint Eastwood helped to make horror the acceptable way to do business in many of his films such as Dirty Harry where he plays a homicide detective who deals out his brutal form of justice as he sees fit. He is an antihero in a sense, but we root for his success none the less. We cheer him on in his murderous deeds because he kills "for the greater good," to stop the criminals before they can incur further damage on innocent people.

Many of us have experienced such ethical and moral dilemmas where we want and encourage the Dirty Harry in our lives to step forth and take care of the justice that no one is willing to do. But at what cost do we make this move? Do we lose a bit our our life and faith each time we go to such lengths? Or are we strengthened in our resolve and beliefs? It seems to me that we tread a slippery slope when we deify such action and people. Sure there are times when bold action is needed to help save the world (such as Dietrich Bonhoeffer), but do we need to mindlessly kill all criminals without due process?

It seems as though Eastwood himself struggled with such the violent ethics of Dirty Harry. Writer Garreth Higgins notes Eastwood's transition from movies where violence was strictly the underlying motive of his characters, to the point of his characters (Don't Stop Believin', 73). In 1992's Unforgiven Eastwood is a mercenary cowboy who's soul diminishes each time he kills. In 2003 he directed Mystic River that tells the adage that the sins of the father always continue, but he adds that it does so in horrific and community destroying ways. Higgins further comments on this development, "By this stage, Eastwood was clearly saying that he knew bullets did not stop anything: they merely perpetuated the cycle of violence" (73).

However, Clint Eastwood further atoned for his sinful characters of the past by his direction of Million Dollar Baby, Flags of our Fathers, Letters from Iwo Jima, and Gran Torino In each of these films he plumbs the depths of humanity: fear, pride, lust for power, racism, and stubbornness. Eastwood's later films have expressed a sort of regret for his earlier works, but have none the less used violence as a way to teach the world  that violence does not always solve the case as Dirty Harry may have argued.

Which Eastwood resonates with you better, the younger or older?

Taking requests for next week...the 1980s!
-Tom

Stan Lee and Marvel Comics

I apologize that it has been so long since my last post! It seems as though a vacation and trying to catch up with the speed of a church is a lot more time consuming than I had planned. Anyways, back to our series on faith in U.S. pop culture.

Admittedly I was never much of a comic book kid. I was much more interested in playing outdoors and collecting sports trading cards. Whatever reading I did was from a traditional book as opposed to comics. However, there has been a huge resurgence in the interest of comic book heroes. Look at all the movies that have been made recently: a new Batman series, two Spiderman series, the Hulk, Thor, the Avengers, Ironman, X-Men, Superman, and I am sure there are others I am forgetting. It seems as though that as the baby boomer generation has aged,  Hollywood is playing back to the nostalgic past for many of the men by bringing their childhood heroes to the silver screen. Not to mention they are simultaneously introducing these heroes to a new generation of fans.

But let's go back to the actual comics of the 1960s. DC comics had been producing comics with heroes that were stoic and not easily related to. And so Stan Lee and Marvel comics arrived on the scene wanting to change that. Lee focused on creating characters that fans could empathize with and know their experiences. This included taking on the difficult hot topics of his time such as war, racism, and sexism. The end result was an ethic of a superhero, fighting evil wherever it rears its ugly head. Anthony R. Mills writes, "Lee's ethics, moreover, are anything but passive. He is a firm believer that all of us have a duty to fight evil and injustice wherever we find it, and to whatever extent we are able" (Don't Stop Believin', 49). 

So how in the world does this relate to faith? First I would like to note that Lee's humanistic approach can aid us in our views on the person of Jesus Christ. So often we think of Jesus as the risen Lord and untouchable. But what about when Jesus is so angry that he flips over tables in the temple? What about when he sweats blood in the garden? And what about his lament from the cross, "My God, my God why have you forsaken me?" Indeed these few instances show us that Jesus was most certainly human and not just a holographic image of the divine on earth. As Christians we confess in the paradox that Jesus was both fully God and fully human. By focusing too much on the holy, we relegate the human side of Jesus to the profane at the expense of ourselves. Much like Lee's attempts to create heroes that readers can relate to, the gospels show us a savior who experiences things just like us! The divine coming to live as one of us is a bold move by God indeed. But it was a move that showed the radical extremes to which God goes to know creation and to save creation from the powers of sin. 

Another way in which Lee's ethic of the superhero helps us in our faith today is to model a way of life. Lee shows us that these heroes are flawed and go through the same struggle we do, so why can't we be superheroes too? To review the above quote from Mills, we have the duty to fight evil wherever it arises. We are charged by God with the gift of an ability to act in the face of such troubling issues. We need to live into that vocation and be the superheros we were made to be! Can you imagine what a world would look like if we donated some money  or food to food shelves or if we ate only what our bodies needed? I am guessing hunger would no longer be an issue. Can you imagine if we stood up against environmental violence? I assume that global warming would begin to web away. No matter where you find yourself, try and be a superhero today. You just might change and save the world!

That's all for now. Next post will be on the 1970s...any requests?