Thou turnest man to destruction; and sayest, Return, ye children of men.
-Psalm 90:3, KJV
The most astonishing things about the recent Planned Parenthood videos are not the videos themselves. We always knew they were killing people, so it shouldn’t be a surprise when we find out that they are selling the bodies of the people they slaughter. No, that revelation is interesting to watch, but it shouldn’t surprise it.
Make us ashamed, angry, and sick to the stomach? Yes.
Surprised? No.
But the surprising part is watching people defend it. We’ve had defenders of death for some time,
of course. We’ve had the same arguments
for decades now, and some people seem really sincere in presenting them. The only thing that has really changed is the
level of self-denial inherent in these arguments as medical science continues
to make it more and more obvious that which the Bible taught us from the
beginning – that a fetus (Latin for “baby”) is a living human. And the Bible goes further still with the
statement that not only is the baby a living human, but is also made in the
image of God, and therefore worthy of dignity and respect.
The arguments become more desperate as that fact is becoming
more obvious. For many of us, who
genuinely thought that the world would come around once it was proven that the
baby is alive, it is a bit of a shock when we watch people still cling to death
because they love it.
We love death.
Thinking about all of this put a remembrance in my mind of a
movie I have seen a couple of times already – Children of Men. In this dystopian tale, we find ourselves in
a future where people are no longer able to conceive children. For the last two decades, there has not been
a child born. Humanity is dying, and we
all know it. Some try to continue with
their daily lives, but life has become cheap.
There is murder; there is rioting; there is terrorism. Life is fading, and so it is discarded.
Except that there is now a pregnant woman, and she needs to
be protected.
What is wonderful about this story is that it teaches us of
the value of life by teaching us of the terrors of death. When death grasps a people, the result is
ugly and strained. It is dark and
hopeless, and that hopelessness has weighed society down so that everyone feels
it.
It is so close to where we’re at that it’s difficult to
watch.
For the people in the movie, it’s been so long like that,
that they’ve forgotten what hope is like.
There’s a powerful scene in a movie, a battle scene between a bunch of
prisoners and an army, and the characters go by with the newly born baby. And it stops.
The fighting stops. It starts up
again, don’t get me wrong— this child hasn’t solved all the problems in the
world – but for that moment, there is a flash of remembrance, of the way it
used to be when there was hope.
We’re getting to that place faster than we care to admit. We’ve been killing ourselves so long that we
don’t even know how to deal with life anymore.
And what this movie does is to show us ourselves, how calloused we have
become, and then renews hope.
Which is a weird thing to say about a film as depressing as
this one is. It’s not easy to
watch. It’s not a movie that you would,
even if you agree with me that it is a brilliant work of art, watch on any sort
of regular basis. It’s the sort of movie
that you need to mull over for a while, and maybe you’re not the best company while
you are doing so.
(And I say that from experience, when we perhaps foolishly
decided to play the movie for some friends of ours, and having a lively
discussion about silly things was difficult to do afterward.)
But all that being said, when you look closely at where we
are as a society, it’s depressing. It’s
seriously depressing. But did you see
hope there too? As a Christian, we know
from where that hope comes. Oddly
enough, it comes from a particular birth of a Child as well. Well, it is almost like that was
intentional. (It was.)
To quote the novelist, P. D. James, directly, she tells us:
When I began The Children of Men, I didn’t set out to write a Christian book. I set out to deal with the idea I had. What would happen to society with the end of the human race? At the end of it, I realized I had written a Christian fable. It was quite a traumatic book to write.1
I confess that I have not read the novel. I can say that the film is traumatic to
watch. But it’s the sort of trauma we
need more of, because it focuses us, it guides us, to speaks to us of who we
are. We need more of that, and it’s
great art.
Not having read the book, I am told that some of the
Christian imagery is taken out for the film version. It’s undoubtedly Christian anyway, I think,
despite its R rating, and I would much rather point to something like this as a
good film for Christians to watch than some of the other garbage we review on
this blog.
The light we see in so many Christian films is so contrived,
so desperately written. In the darkness
in which we now live, this film shines a light that speaks to us.
Sources:
1. 1. Cited in http://www.thegospelcoalition.org/blogs/justintaylor/2006/12/10/pd-james-and-children-of-men/,
accessed 9/30/15
