Be Afraid, Very Afraid: Monsters Without and Within

“How can you watch that?!” 

This is the indignant response from some friends who find out I watch selected movies.  The conversation usually begins with the question, “How many murders, killings, and war deaths have you witnessed on screen?”  My simple response, “Thousands.”  As their face reveals righteous revolt, questioning my very salvation, I will ask, “Have you seen The Lord of the Rings?”  Invariably, without question, the response will be something akin to a swooning bride on her wedding day, “Ohhhhhh, Lord of the Rings!”  I wait kindly until the person collects herself and then say, “There are certain parts of LOTR that I cannot watch.”  [pause]  If it were possible for someone to lose their salvation twice in the same conversation, that would be it.

In my estimation, the opening scene in Return of the King where Smeagol fights for the ring, killing his friend, is the most garish, inhuman death scene in Hollywood history.  I remember seeing the look on Smeagol’s face thinking to myself, “This is how someone must look just before an actual murder takes place.”  Watching Hollywood stunt men construct “death scenes” is nothing like the look in Smeagol’s eyes.  Here is where we must pause to ask Who is the real monster?  We know two monsters from Tolkien’s masterpiece: Mordor and Smeagol becoming Gollum.  There is a malevolent outside monster, Mordor.  But we house our own villainous wretch, Smeagol becoming Gollum.  So here is my thesis: there are monsters without and within: we ignore either or both to our peril.

Monsters exist outside us.  “Serving Humans” is a wonderful 1960’s Twilight Zone episode where extraterrestrials seem friendly.  Aliens have come to earth to serve humans.  People realize too late, however, that “serving humans” is the title of a cook book.  Another Rod Serling offering from the 60’s entitled “Nightmare at 20,000 Feet” will make you think twice before you board another airplane.  You see, to Serling, gremlins were more than imaginary; they could rip up your plane in flight.  Film series such as The Terminator, beginning with Arnold Schwarzenegger, or Alien with Sigorney Weaver, tell us again and again that monsters from without are most often interested in our elimination.  There are no tame monsters.  Evil powers exist.  We may live in 2010 but monsters have not changed from the 1960’s or from the Genesis account of 1400 B.C.

In the First Testament world, monsters from without were aberrations of the gods.  Great cosmic clashes existed between monster-gods.  Movies like Alien vs. Predator are the same as Marduk vs Tiamet of the ancient Enuma Elish myth.  In ancient belief, great sea creatures were given monster status.  In the Enuma Elish water and darkness, for instance, are both seen as forces of chaos.  Chaos is personified by Tiamat in the ancient Near Eastern creation story.  Chaos is a menace.  So-called “gods” need to tame her.  But Moses put sea monsters in their place in Genesis 1:21 saying simply, “God created the great sea creatures.”  These beings were not beyond the scope of God’s control—He made them.  In Scripture, God neutralizes chaos as in Psalm 74:13-17; 89:9-10; 104:7-9.  Water is considered a mysterious monster in pagan tales.  But in Genesis, water is simply separated from land by God (1:6-7).  The function is short and sweet, very direct.  In Scripture, creation is unified and orderly in Genesis.  The repetition of words and phrases such as “Let there be” “and there was” denotes consistency, constancy missing in other cultures’ explanations of the past.  And God’s Book ends in Revelation saying that the renewed heavens and earth will include no sea (Rev 21:1), no night (22:5), and no death (21:4). We do not have a chaotic universe in which superhuman creatures vie for power.  What we do have is The Personal Eternal Triune Creator who is all powerful. Genesis 1 is familiar with monsters from without and puts them in their place.

And this is the reason why I like Stephen King.  Stephen King is probably the best known monster writer of our day.  And here is where I may begin to step on some toes.  Stephen King has said that Stephanie Meyer cannot write worth a darn.  Stephanie Meyer has produced feel good vampire stories.  The Twilight series has created the vampire every guy wants to be and every girl wants to date.  While the vestige of familiarity remains, Twilight, New Moon, and their children have relegated the once supernatural Dracula to the children’s petting zoo.  Meyer, who is a Mormon (and also, now, very rich) has done a disservice to those of us who battle monsters.  She herself, in interviews I have read, is clear in her intention.  She wants to create good vampires whose stories are more light than dark.  The nice vampire created by Meyer is akin to reading liberal scholars demythologizing Yahweh’s miracles in The First Testament and His Son’s person in The Second Testament.  While I would concur with Stephen King’s literary analysis of a book like Twilight my concern runs deeper.  In a culture of tolerance, Meyer’s perspective is celebrated: and it should not be.

 

Unfortunately, we need monster movies to show the dangers of so-called “tolerance.”  Bram Stoker’s monster Dracula DOES exist—Stephanie Meyer’s “Edward” would not stand a chance against him.  In the very first chapter of Dracula we meet Jonathan Harker who at first strikes us as those reading the Twilight series: they have NO CLUE what they’re getting into.  It is the townspeople that have their act together.  When they discover Harker is on his way to Count Dracula’s castle they immediately know this man ventures toward a place they know is evil.  With a great amount of Christian imagery, the commoners better understand the danger.  It seems to me we should carefully consider outside monsters like Dracula, and films like 30 Days into Night. Here is a superior rendition of vampirism.  Vicious ghouls with nothing on their mind but bloodletting must be stopped.  In similar fashion, we should take care to understand the truth in Guillermo Del Toro’s movie, Pan’s Labyrinth. Del Toro’s realistic-fantasy reminds us that monsters exist and want to have us.

The reality of monsters is the reason why I cannot watch movies such as The Exorcism of Emily Rose or, more recently, The Last Exorcism. The depiction of demon possession is Really Real.  Director Scott Derrickson, a Christian, wanted to make people face a true-life experience confronting their fears in The Exorcism of Emily Rose. He wanted them to ask the right spiritual questions.  The film depicts two views of the world: naturalism and supernaturalism.  The audience is left to consider what explanation can be given to the awfulness this young German woman experienced in 1975.  One can leave the film content with the assumption that the problem with Emily Rose was her world or herself.  Others, however, will be shaken to wonder whether Emily’s monstrous behavior was a monster who invaded her world.

And here is the point:  Monsters do exist.  Evil is real.  The “darkness” is powerful.  Monsters must never be de-mythologized or sanitized.  There is power in “high places.”  No one can do an exegesis of Scripture without understanding monsters’ importance.  The supernatural monsters of Daniel, 2 Peter, and Jude live.  Unfortunately, the horror genre in film is one of the last vestiges of true Truth on the subject of monsters.

I suspect that real monsters leave us alone in our naturalistic-materialistic American world because we think external monsters only exist in the movies.  Consumed by what we can see, what is unseen bothers us little; and so the demons bother us not at all.  The Sadducees, unimpressed by belief in a world outside their own, were more afraid of The Roman soldiers than angels atop a rolling stone.  The Pharisees paid lip service to One outside themselves but whose service was about themselves.  The Herodians, whose name should speak for itself, believed in politics, period.  So when Jesus came teaching about a Kingdom not of this world, this world would not hear of it.  Monsters inhabit this other world.

Our understanding of eschatology, angelology, or demonology is not simply research and writing for a paper grade.  Daniel 10 should be read to know that malevolent forces constrain some politicians and countries.  The phrase “principalities and powers” is but the tip of the iceberg of Ephesian exegesis which ought to make our blood run cold.  When you ponder and pray remember the cosmic, unseen battle which is waged all about us, even now, in this room.  In a similar vein, the prophet Elisha had to ask Yahweh to open the eyes of his servant in 2 Kings 6 so that he would not miss the angelic army ringed round the Syrian chariots.  And know that while we do good on earth as Paul says nine times to Titus, that the monstrous evil we fight causes us to cry out “even so come Lord Jesus.”  So we must not miss what the ancient Church commentator Cyril of Jerusalem wrote.  “The Dragon is by the side of the road, watching those who pass.  Beware lest he devour you.  We go to the Father of Souls.  But it is necessary to pass by the Dragon.”

I urge us not to be overtaken by what sociologists call “plausibility paradigms”—telling us what is acceptable to believe.  Cognitive or social plausibility paradigms lie, saying that social or mental stimuli are the basis for belief.  Do we accept current cultural viewpoints expressed in phrases such as “our environment makes us who we are”?  Do we simply believe social commentary on CNN or The BBC simply because it is “online.”  Do we digest, as if it were fact, the popular ramblings from a Hollywood personality simply because their airbrushed magazine picture titillates our nerve endings?  Do we take at face value what any current psychologist, president, professor, or pundit says simply because we see and hear them everywhere?  I encourage us all not to be taken captive through these hollow and deceptive philosophies, which depend on human tradition and the basic principles of this world rather than Christ (Colossians 2:8); because Christ has disarmed the rulers and authorities and put them to open shame, by triumphing over them at The Cross (2:15).

Colossians forces us to return to Genesis.  We must understand that outside monsters exist; but we must also contend with the monster within.  You see, in the ancient Near East only kings bore the image of the gods.  For the ancients, the image of a god meant that the king was the representative of the god on earth and responsible to that god.  Of course, this is exactly what Genesis 1:26-27 means: at creation humans are kings.  We bear the representation of God and are His representatives on earth.  After The Fall, however, we lost our kingship and want to be king again.  Instead of being made in God’s image, we liked to make God in ours.  If you think through what you are being taught in Old Testament courses you understand.  Every single depiction of a god in other cultures bears human attributes.  Making God in our image meant we usurped The Creator role.  And guess what?  Every single one of those gods made by human hands is in some way freakish, a fetish, a feral beast, a monstrous creation.  And here is the lesson: monsters look like us.

The monster within is clearly the point of these classic works: Frankenstein, Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, The Picture of Dorian Gray, and The Island of Dr. Moreau. In each case, real, awful monsters exist.  And in each case, these monsters can be traced back to our original idol making; our God-usurping problem in Genesis 3.  Dr. Frankenstein wants to overthrow scientific boundaries.  The result?  Frankenstein creates a monster in his image.  Dr. Jekyll wants to live in a world where there are no consequences.  The result?  Jekyll creates the monstrous Hyde who kills Jekyll’s image.  Dorian wants to live forever.  The result?  Dorian transfers his own monstrosities to an object bearing his image.  Dr. Moreau wants to prove that the creature can create better than the Creator.  The result?  Moreau wants to bear the image of the ultimate Lawgiver.  Perhaps there is no more telling quotation than when Dr. Moreau admits to Prendick who had been marooned on the island, “I am a religious man, as every sane man must be.  I have seen more of the ways of this world’s Maker than you—for I have sought his laws all my life, in my way [emphasis mine].”  In my way. Here is Genesis 3.

Sometimes the real monsters we confront have been encouraged by our own idol making.  The Grudge series is other-worldly awful because a demonic presence is invited by our creation of it.  Drag Me to Hell is a moralistic movie reminding us that our idols may return to haunt us.  The Box, with Cameron Diaz, explains that worshiped idols always demand payment which exceeds what the idol gives.  And, at times, our scientific pursuits open windows to other worlds that should have remained closed, such as in Stephen King’s The Mist. I believe Nietzsche said it best in his classic Beyond Good and Evil, “Whoever fights monsters should see to it that in the process he does not become a monster” (89).

Two very different poets clearly identify the monster within.  Listen first to Emily Dickinson:

One need not be a chamber to be haunted, One need not be a house;
The brain has corridors surpassing, Material place.

Far safer, of a midnight meeting, External ghost,
Than an interior confronting, That whiter host.

Far safer through an Abbey gallop, The stones achase,
Than, moonless, one’s own self encounter, In lonesome place.

Ourself, behind ourself concealed, Should startle most;
Assassin, hid in our apartment, Be horror’s least.

The prudent carries a revolver, He bolts the door,
O’erlooking a superior spectre, More near.

And now hear e. e. cummings, in a poem I analyzed when I taught high school students:

pity this busy monster, manunkind,

not. Progress is a comfortable disease:
your victim (death and life safely beyond)

plays with the bigness of his littleness
— electrons deify one razorblade
into a mountainrange; lenses extend
unwish through curving wherewhen till unwish
returns on its unself.
A world of made
is not a world of born — pity poor flesh

and trees, poor stars and stones, but never this
fine specimen of hypermagical

ultraomnipotence. We doctors know

a hopeless case if — listen: there’s a hell
of a good universe next door; let’s go

Dickinson reminds us never to overlook the monster which is us because, as cummings says, this monster will create other monsters.

 

Monsters remind us what we can become.  “Fear thy neighbor” is the ultimate paranoia tag line making us wonder aloud, “Who can we trust?”  The remake of The Crazies brings homage to George Romero’s legacy but makes the audience speculate, what if WE are our own worst enemy?  Directing “The Night of the Living Dead” to “The Crazies” to “Dawn of the Dead” George Romero has been consistent in his outlook on human nature.  Romero asks the questions, “What if the monsters we are most concerned about are our neighbors?  What if WE are the monsters?”  Plying his trade during 1960’s upheaval, Romero bucks Hollywood conventions.  Harkening back to classic horror literature, Romero makes us fear ourselves, what things we are capable of, more than our fellow creatures clawing at the door.  Whether it be Shelley’s Frankenstein or Stevenson’s Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde our real wonderment is not “why did this happen?” but “what have we become?”

What have we become?  Ever since Genesis 3 we have shown our misshapen, ugly, monstrous selves.  Born with the root of sin deep within the soil of our own person, we are anxious to eat its fruit.  “For by one man sin entered into the world and death by sin so that all have sinned” summarizes well our condition from Romans 5.  Our so-called “good” cannot gain Divine forgiveness or acceptance according to Romans 3.  And those things which I don’t want to do, I do anyway is the constant problem in Romans 7.  It comes as no surprise that the master French apologist Blaise Pascal simply called us humans “incomprehensible monsters” [depending on the edition, 245 or 420; 246 or 434]  Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein reverses the roles.  In her book, monster teaches man.  Perhaps here we find the perfect mirror.  Reading this story we see what we have done: an attempt to usurp the place of God.  In the end, Frankenstein’s monster observes, “men appear to me as monsters”.  We become what we create.

I would conclude this brief address with direct applications for students at Moody Bible Institute.  I have chosen to communicate the biblical truths through Hollywood’s lens, in particular the importance of what monster movies teach us.  Here are a few applications:

1.  Monster movies teach us limitation. We tend to get the impression in monster-disaster feature films like Godzilla or Cloverfield that humans can overcome any obstacle by producing just the right combinations of chemicals to kill “the beast.”  It’s just not true.  The ultimate answers to our problems necessitate The Creator to overcome His creation.

2.  Monster movies teach us homiletics. I suggest we approach the horror or thriller genre as prophecy.  Prophets either forth-told (that is, preached) or foretold (meaning, they predicted).  Monster movies do the same.  Guillermo Del Toro’s under-appreciated Mimic preaches against the attempt by scientists to overcome one problem which creates a larger one.  George Romero’s Night of the Living Dead and Dawn of the Dead films preach against materialism at the mall.

3.  Monster movies teach us metaphysics. Other-worldly creatures shout, “There is another world!”  Monster-studies should be an arm of Christian apologetics.  Monster movies exist for the same reason Chris Carter’s 1990’s X-Files show stated: “The Truth is Out There.”  Flash Gordon from the 1930’s, H. G. Well’s War of The Worlds just prior to World War II, The Blob from the 1950’s, Twilight Zone and Star Trek from the 1960’s all admit the same message, “There is another world!”

4.  Monster movies teach us humility. Monster movies should be cautionary tales about human hubris or pride.  Dr. Frankenstein, Dr. Moreau, and Dr. Jekyll all assume that they can control their creation, finding instead, that their creation is beyond their control.  If there is anything that the Alien movies taught, it was this: all attempts to utilize horrific creatures for our own selfish ends, ends with our end.

5.  Monster movies teach us ethics. In monster movies, boundaries exist.  Freedom is limited.  Michael Crichton’s novels brought to the big screen make this point.  I still remember first reading Jurassic Park and then taking a phalanx of students to see it.  Crichton’s words still send a chill up my spine as we hear the chaos scientist say, “Just because we can do it, doesn’t mean we should do it.

6.  Monster movies teach us origins. Monsters laugh at last year’s Newsweek cover story saying that evil has evolutionary beginnings.  The only way a secularist can talk about evil is if they borrow the term from Christians.  And isn’t this the underlying idea behind films like The Blair Witch Project or The Fourth Kind? Evil exists: deal with it.

7.  Monster movies teach us hermeneutics. The interpretation of the text of Scripture or a screenplay is the same: one must understand the genre or type of literature.  Film noir (or “dark film”) is the best way to explore the monster within.  A movie in this genre, like the just released movie The Square from Australia is relentless in its quest to show us that we reap MUCH more than we sow.

8.  Monster movies teach us philosophy. We can be deceived into believing that the “bad” is more powerful than the “good,” that we should be more afraid of the devil’s works than the work of God.  If the movie Legion leaves us with any lesson it is that Heaven triumphs over hell.

Monsters exist without and within: we ignore either or both to our peril.  All of this brings us back to Mordor and Gollum.  There is another world to which we must give an account.  Our adversary has been defeated on The Cross.  And in this world, we must account for ourselves.  The Cross provides redemption for our own worst monster, ourselves.  Your studies at Moody Bible Institute provide you the doctrinal grid through which to ponder the evil of monsters without and within which you encounter daily.  And so let me give this benediction:

Sovereign Creator, Sustainer, Consummator, hear our prayer.  Bless these, the next generation of Christian purveyors of Your Gospel.  Give them courage to stand for the teaching that Genesis is literal, real, and, historical.  Give them courage to stand for teaching which demands monsters exist.  Give them courage to battle both monsters without and within.  And Lord, help them to remember that courage knows what to fear.  And so we declare that the beginning of wisdom is the fear of Yahweh.  Amen.

Be Afraid, Be Very Afraid: Monsters Without and Within. An address given at Moody Bible Institute Chapel, 8 September 2010.  Dr. Mark Eckel, Professor of Leadership, Education & Discipleship, Capital Seminary.