I am saying, "farewell" to my xanga, and attempting to do something more worthwhile.
Today's topic, class: Worldly realities and Philippians 4:8
While teaching Flannery O' Connor's short story, A Good Man is Hard to Find, many of my students complained about the brutal violence that permeated the story. While anybody familiar with Ms. O' Connor's work would certainly not be surprised by her extreme use of grotesque imagery, themes, and violence, it's use does raise an interesting question. One of the quotes attributed to the Millidgeville author is, " The truth does not change according to our ability to stomach it."
O' Connor, a devout Catholic, shows the world for its grim realities. Her worlds are worlds of desperate people haunted by Christ. Her characters are devastating in their cruelty, amorality, and yet refreshingly frank, honest, and more true to life than we might like to imagine.
My question is this: If we are instructed to dwell on the pure, the noble, the right, where does that tension meet with the impure, the base, and the downright wrong? Obviously (hopefully) Kinkade-esque saccharine is too far a reaction. Does immersing yourself in the squalor of perversity give a clearer picture of the realities of life? Will I ever be able to reconcile my love of Sylvia Plath and my presuppositional faith?
I think O' Connor is a unique case. As hard is it is to find a good man, it is even harder to find a good balance between our calling to dwell on good, but live with the bad. I don't think it can be put any better than the author herself, "It seems to be a fact that you suffer as much from the Church as for it but if you believe in the divinity of Christ, you have to cherish the world at the same time that you struggle to endure it."
There IS a tension between the two, and I don't think that looking for the platonic (let's throw in a few more worldviews here to make it interesting) "middle ground" is the answer. Too often, Christian's use their worldview as a defensive shield, rather than an offensive one. Reducing something by its view of the world can become a crutch with which the world becomes stark black and white rather than vibrant color. People don't take Christians seriously as thinkers, because we are so given to knee-jerk reactions. Comfortable to label something as having an inferior worldview because it might make us wrestle with questions we would rather not wrestle with.
At the end of the story, the grandmother (a cultural Christian) is faced with troubling questions of life and death, Christ's divinity and his claims, and the nature of people that she has never wrestled with before. Before being gunned down by the "misfit" she exclaims "You are one of my babies, one of my children!" She is shot three times in the heart, and rests childlike, with a smile on her face looking up into the gray sky. Salvation came only when she questioned the faith she had lounged in so comfortably all of her life. The misfit's claim that she would have been a good person if, "someone had been there to shoot her every moment of her life," is damning. How can we expect to grow stronger if we do not end up in situations that question our very presuppositional beliefs?
Now, should we go out and fornicate with the world and try to influence it from underneath the soiled sheets of depravity? probably not, but we should be willing to listen, not label it as pariah.
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4 comments:
I am mightily tired of reading reviews that call A Good Man is Hard to Find brutal and sarcastic. The stories are hard but they are hard because there is nothing harder or less sentimental than Christian realism. I believe that there are many rough beasts now slouching toward Bethlehem to be born and that I have reported on the progress of a few of them, and when I see these stories described as horror stories I am always amused because the reviewer always has hold of the wrong horror.--Flannery O'Connor
Good to see you blogging my friend. I look forward to reading and responding to your posts.
Great thoughts, Jonathan! I think that no one in the world is better equipped to handle the dark and difficult matters of sin than Christians. I love O'Connor and think that all believers should read her. She introduces us to parts of life that many white suburbanites would be protected from otherwise. The discomfort is important. It's reviving.
Not as a contradiction but a clarification, I feel the need to say that intentional self-exposure to certain things is still questionable. I can't handle movies that have graphic sexual violence or movies that are classified as horror or satanic, so I don't see them. I will see (and enjoy) films that have violence, sexuality, vulgarity, drug use, etc. The line between a quality film that addresses reality and the film that explores depravity for depravity's sake, that's more complicated. And the same principle can be applied to books. I've read some Christian authors that I felt crossed the line and wrote too graphically for the sake of the message they were trying to convey.
I don't think Flannery O'Connor falls anywhere near that line. She writes with the stated purpose of exploring and honoring Jesus Christ and she writes imagery that is moving, disturbing, but not overwrought.
I think you are right Amy. I have no patience for so called "gross out films" like American Pie, Beerfest, etc, where language, nudity, and sexuality are thrust into your face for a cheap laugh. Requiem for a Dream is a teriffic example of a film that explores drug use, sexuality, etc in a very sobering light. Far from making light of it, the film is a fantastic exploration of addiction in all its forms. I think it is a very necessary film.
My critique is that Christians will often write something off as offensive or blatently anti-christian without actually knowing all the facts. No wonder people think of Christians as skiddish and sheltered wet blankets, anything that makes us uncomfortable or question is almost unanimously labeled as "bad."
Terror abounded when the Davinci Code came out, but were we really afraid that a Hollywood production would shake our theological foundations? Of course not, but it sure looked like that sometimes.
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