Man on Fire (a consuming fire)

Go ahead: make me tons of money.

Everybody likes a good revenge flick, though not every one would admit it. Whether they're done well (like Man on Fire), average (like The Punisher), or poorly (like Colombiana), they all follow the same basic structure: idyllic life is interrupted by some jackass and their jackass minions (whose jackass-quotient rises steadily throughout the film), which causes a highly trained but burned-out protagonist to go vigilante all over the place. This structure is especially potent if the "idyllic life" contains a redemption angle where the burned-out protagonist is brought back from the brink of self-destruction by a central-secondary character (often a child) who is subsequently kidnapped or killed, which sparks the ensuing mayhem. And we, the audience, enjoy said mayhem as the protagonist delivers a whole serving of payback to those who dared touch the heart-strings-pulling plot device. And we love every bit of it.

Nuff said.

Such films are controversial, however, mainly because revenge and vigilantism are controversial. No man is above the law, but there are plenty outside of it (i.e., criminals) who don't abide by its rules. So when law enforcement (or law-abiding citizens) try to play the game of justice with those who don't bother about the rules, they are necessarily handicapped. The whole thing feels completely unfair and counter-intuitive, and yet the "whole thing" makes all the difference in the world. The lines in the sand that we draw as a society may hinder us, but that hindrance is the difference between us and them, between us and those in the darkness outside. Without law and the order it brings, we are no better than criminals. Worse yet, we are no better than animals. Thus, though it may give us disadvantages, we ought to take the more noble path and abide by the law regardless.

"This is where the law stops and I start."

Then again, is the law really such an ideal thing? To put it another way, is justice no higher than the law? The truth is that justice is the real transcendent ideal, while "the law" is a human construct, our best effort to encapsulate justice in our own specific society with its own specific situations. And like most best efforts, we fail. We fall short of the glory of justice. Thus, it is left to the vigilante to deal out justice against evil and thereby shame the law for its inadequacies and society for its failures. It may be nobility to abide by "the law" even when it seems to fight against you, but it is greater wisdom to realize when "the law" has failed, when it has become so hopelessly dis-empowered and corrupted that the only way to serve true justice is to go outside of it as a criminal, and yet not as a criminal, for justice is a line drawn deeper than any law, and that distinction is what makes all the difference, whether you are "in" the law or not.

Hero or psychotic terrorist?

Then again, if justice is the higher, more ideal thing, then it is necessarily the more abstract thing. Abstract things cannot be fully comprehended or understood until they are made concrete, and the more concrete the better. Now, the law is concrete, and thus it is a useful rubric for justice (even if it is sometimes inadequate to fully capture it); but if a vigilante works outside of the law, then by what rubric do we measure him or her? Do we just take them at their word that they are serving true justice? Why should we believe them? After all, they could be lying. They could be just another evil, crazy person looking for an excuse to kill people and have found a golden opportunity to not only do so but also be lauded as a "hero". The law is not always just, but without the law how do we know what justice even is?

So goes the argument, one we will probably never see the end of, which is why I'm actually not interested in an argument. I'm interested in a fact, the fact that, despite all or our arguments and controversies, everybody still loves (or at least sympathizes with) a good revenge flick. My question is, why? Why, despite all of our moralizing and posturing, do we enjoy watching the bad guys "get theirs" in a devastating, scorched earth way?

"I am talking scorched earth!"

Is it because we're Americans, whose culture has idealized the cowboy ethic? Then again, we're hardly the only culture to have idealized vengeance. Perhaps it's because we're degenerates? That sounds better (and more "holy"): our desire for vengeance is a pagan thing (which even pagans like Homer and Aeschylus grew weary of), and it serves to demonstrate how far we've fallen from God. That sounds right, and yet it doesn't sound right at all. Shouldn't evil be punished and justice served, and aren't our laws often futile and inadequate against evil? Is it really degeneracy that breaks our hearts and enrages our souls when justice is not "served" and the law is helpless or even culpable? Is God really displeased with out angry hearts? Or is it possible that His heart is even angrier than ours? One way sounds more pious, and the other more satisfying. Is there no rectification between the two?

Justice is a dish best served hot.

I believe that there is a rectification, one that also explains why everyone loves or sympathizes with revenge flicks. I believe it is this: as human beings, fallen yet made in the image of God, we have an inborn desire for apocalypse. That is the great secret behind the popularity of revenge flicks. They are, in a sense, apocalyptic. Justice is served, not by the bad guys being locked up, but also not even by them simply being killed. My earlier term "scorched earth" is the only true way to describe what happens. The protagonist does not simply kill the bad guy; he also destroys his entire enterprise and empire, burning it to the ground, leaving nothing left. No holdings, no assets, no fall backs, no one left to carry on the work. That is not simply revenge, nor is it merely justice. It is apocalypse: a no-quarter, total war against entrenched evil. It is merciless because it is complete. It is pitiless because it is absolute. It will not compromise, and the whole corrupt edifice will be razed to the ground. As one law-abiding citizen put it (with some profanity), "It's gonna be biblical."

At this point, it does us no good to say that we should "turn the other cheek" because "vengeance belongs to God." It is true that the Christian has no grounds to take revenge for affronts made against them, but that does not mean that revenge will never be taken. On the contrary, revenge will be taken, just not by us. Vengeance is not ours because it belongs to God. And He will repay.

This is a side of God many don't like to think about, so they try to forget it. They trivialize it as just some ancient anomaly. They bury it under more squeaky clean or sanitized caricatures. They isolate all of the Faith around pacifism and then downplay everything else. But the truth is never lost, no matter who hard we try to lose it. And the truth is that God is a God of justice. (Just let that idea sink in for a sec.) He is justice, and that does not simply mean mercy to the oppressed, weak, and poor. It also means wrath to the oppressor, proud, and merciless. In fact, the call for God's wrath is just as common in the Bible as calls for His blessing. And it is not just an Old Testament thing either.

"...u...uh...u...u...uh..."

David calls upon God to "destroy" evil-doers, to let "death seize" them and send them to "hell" because of their "wickedness" (Ps. 55:9, 15). Isaiah spoke peace to "fearful hearts" by reminding them that "God will come with vengeance," and that the mountains would melt with the blood of His enemies (Isaiah 34:2-3; 35:4). Jesus spoke of His return as an act of judgment similar to Noah's flood (another apocalyptic event), and that the death toll would be greater than any could imagine (Matt. 24:21-22, 27-28, 38-39). And it is for this return and vengeance that the souls of all the martyrs call out to God (Rev. 6:9-10). This is all apocalyptic language. It is also the language of revenge flicks: salvation for the weak only comes by the utter annihilation of the wicked by someone who is thirsty for blood. And God is thirsty for blood (Is. 63:1-9), and He will repay.

No one "likes" this side of God, and yet we all actually do like it, because we all like a good revenge flick. Everybody wants to see evil dealt with, not in a partial or even legalistic sense, but in an absolute and total sense. That is what apocalypse means: God dealing with evil and sin and the wicked in an absolute and total sense. There will be no mercy for them or all their works, just wrath and a terrible, irreparable ruin. This is meant to be a source of hope to those whom God has saved, saved from wrath (Rom. 5:9). To those still left in the darkness outside, it is to be a warning: apocalypse is coming. The Man on fire is coming. Not a law-abiding citizen, but the Judge who is the Law. He will come with no mercy, for if you are not safe within His fold then you are of the darkness and thus part of the problem. Since we know of the terror or the Lord, we seek to persuade you (II Cor. 5:10-11): be saved from the wrath to come, for it is coming. God is coming, with blessings for His beloved, but with vengeance for all who align themselves with the dark.

-Jon Vowell (c) 2013

Advent Homily: Salvation is of the Law (as preached by an orthodox rebel)

"For the Lord is our judge, the Lord is our lawgiver, the Lord is our king; He will save us." Is. 33:22

Here we see two simple yet staunch truths, one offensive and the other startling (and perhaps even more offensive). The offensive truth is that God, far from being a mere authority, is revealed as the absolute authority (of Israel specifically and by extension all things). The titles that He is given in this verse form a pattern that shows His authority to be all-encompassing.

As the "judge," He is the one who enforces the law: He passes sentence either to vindicate or punish, to deliver or destroy. As the "lawgiver," He is the one who makes the law: He (literally in Hebrew) "engraves" the law on tablets of stone, declaring forever what is right and wrong, just and unjust. And as the "king," He is the Law: He embodies its very essence and is its very reality, for the law is not the result of His arbitrary whims but the reflection of His perfect character. In sum, He is all-in-one the application of the reflection of the will that made and maintains and runs and rules all things. He is the one who is greater than us: greater than our notions and nations, greater than all our fads and fashions, greater than all our meta-narratives or private interpretations, and greater than all our Sin.

That last phrase points to the more starting truth: "He will save us." What's startling about this is that His identity as Savior is a direct result of His identity as the Absolute Authority. To put it simply, He can save us because He is in charge, because He has the power and the right to do so. Now, we often treat salvation as a category unto itself: God does save us, maybe not in spite of Himself, but at least in isolation from Himself, as though God took a holiday from His other attributes. ("Despite His sense of justice and holiness, God saved us anyway.") Scripture shows such well-intended thinking to be false: God's role as Savior is right in line and in accord with all His attributes, viz., His role as Absolute Authority. It is all linked together in one brilliant pattern that is God.

I suspect that we do not like this. Of course, we do not like the idea of absolute authority, but how much less will we like the idea of absolute authority being the grounds for heroism? It is bad enough that we have a king, but now we find that only the king can save us. And why? Because we have broken the law. Rebellion will not save us; rebellion is what's killing us. It is the height of idiocy to say that we must rebel against God in order to be free. We have rebelled against God, and we are not free but instead are enslaved to other masters, ones armed with cruel hate: the Devil and Sin and Death. It is vain to speak of questioning authority; we have questioned it. It is vain to speak of transgressing the boundaries; we have transgressed them. We have breached the wall, we have scaled the city, we have cast down the thrones of universal law, and we have paid for it with our souls, for in Adam we all died (I Cor. 15:22a), and all our talk is the rigor mortis setting in further and further and further. This rot will be purged with wrath, and we will be consumed in the purging, for the wages of Sin is death (Rom. 6:23a).

The only one who can save us from the wrath of the law is the Law Himself, the Law-giver and Law-applier, the only one who knows how to satisfy it. And He did satisfy it. He breached the walls of our insurrection to satisfy it. He mingled with the dust so that He might rebel against our rebellion. For this He was manifested: that He might destroy the works of the Devil (I John 3:8), the scheming, lying, son of perdition, whose trick have wasted the world. The King of kings met our anarchy with a little Anarchy of his own: the anarchy of righteousness against evil, of light against darkness, of order against chaos. That is the meaning of Christmas: the Law is our Savior, the King is our Hero. Amen.

-Jon Vowell (c) 2012

The Desolating Law (The Gospel According to Isaiah, Part 2)

"Then said I, 'Woe is me! For I am undone, because I am a man of unclean lips and dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips! For my eyes have seen the King, the Lord of Hosts.'" Is. 6:5

Herein is the meaning behind those mysterious phrases about how "the letter kills" and works "the ministry of death" (II Cor. 3:6-7). When we catch sight of the Law, of God's holy standard, which is the substance of His quality and character, there can be no other response but despair and desolation. That standard is not simply beyond us; it is completely outside of our categories. We could not even approach such a venture, and all of our tools and plans fall from our hands as useless things. The perfections of God shatter all of our vanities and unravel all of our tightly woven self-delusions, bringing us face to face with the truth: Who then can be saved? There are none righteous. No, not one. There are none that understand. There are none who seek after God. We have all gone astray and become unprofitable. There is none that does good. No, not one. Our end is everlasting destruction from the presence of the Lord and from the glory of His might, and we will cry to the mountains and rocks, "Fall on us! And hide us from the face of Him who sits on the throne!" (Luke 18:26; Rom. 3:10-12; II Thess. 1:9; Rev. 6:16).

If you would find salvation, then there is no way past this dark night of the soul. The horror of great darkness must fall upon you, for your confidences are your failures, and your strengths are your weaknesses. The foundations must be destroyed if new ones are to be laid, and is not God's word "like a hammer that breaks the rock in pieces" (Jer. 23:29) and "a sword, piercing to the division of soul and spirit" (Heb. 4:12)? Is not the Word Himself like a great stone, and "whosoever shall fall on this stone shall be broken, and on whomsoever it shall fall, it will grind him to powder" (Matt. 21:42-44)? So you see, destruction and desolation are tied up into the nature of salvation, for we are not in need of rehabilitation but a revolution, a great upheaval of our being, uprooting and unknotting the fabric of our corrupt constitutions so that they made be made new. In short, when we catch sight of the heavenly vision, we are undone. We must be undone, for there can be no beginning of the new if there is not first an end to the old (II Cor. 5:17).

-Jon Vowell (c) 2012

 

The Lunatic (The Six Shades of Sin, Part IV)

"Woe unto them who call evil good and good evil, who count darkness as light and light as darkness, who put bitter for sweet and sweet for bitter!" Is. 5:20

Immorality is frowned upon as a term because it reeks of prudish pedantry. It conjures up the image of a great, waving index finger in the sky and a disembodied voice crying, "Thou shalt not!" Of course, we all acknowledge that people do "bad" things (for no one is perfect), but the term "immorality" seems made up by some unholy alliance between wet blankets and killjoys, the private codification of buzz-killers. This is because we have a skewed view of immorality (and subsequently, morality). If we view immorality as a path to all the finer (or at least, more exciting) pleasures of life, then morality cannot help but be seen as a divergence from everything enjoyable. Nobody wants that, and truthfully nobody should want that, if that is what it is.

Unfortunately, that is not what it is, and here is how skewed our view is. Morality is not and has never been a divergence from all good things; immorality is. It is the great refusal, the negation and rejection, the complete turning away from and falling out of the right path. It is with God that all joy and pleasures dwell (Ps. 16:11), but we have all gone astray (Is. 53:6). That is the true meaning of immorality: not a surrender to pleasure, but a denial of it. You are not a seeker but a strayer. You have left the course to Canaan to wander in the wilderness, and out there all those who wander are lost.

Charles Williams once said, "Hell is inaccurate." What he meant was that Hell (and by extension all wickedness), in diverging and pulling away from God, cannot help but consistently fall into error. To put it simply, Hell is stupid. It believes stupid things, thinks stupid things, and says stupid things. It calls good evil and darkness light. Idiocy is the very hallmark of evil, and for every wickedness there is a foolishness attached to it (whether it be foolish actions, foolish principles, or both).  For example, anyone who has ever done something wrong (of whatever degree) assumes a supremacy over the law (of whatever kind). They assume that they are greater than and smarter than the present authority, whether it be the police or their parents. They consider the consequences of their actions to be of no consequence, until (of course) they get caught. Then the absurdity of their actions falls upon them, and they become painfully aware that they were ants mocking a whirlwind.

It is the same with us and God. Those who do evil think their actions of no consequence because they deem Him to be of no consequence. It is folly. It is absurdity. It is lunacy. Every act of evil is lunacy, whether it is stealing cookies from the cookie jar or 9-11. Every act is a skewing, a swerve, a divergence, an act of unreality. To do evil is to turn away from the light of the law and be caught in a perpetual fog, and to be evil is to be that fog, thickening with every additional atrocity until your self-wrought stupification solidifies into a permanent, horrifying imbecility. Hell is the only fit place for such a terrible breaking down of the heart and mind, for Hell is inaccurate, the lunatic asylum of the universe.

If lunacy lies with evil, then sanity lies with good: not just a calming of mind and heart but also a continual clarity of mind and heart. Every act of true virtue is like a shaft of light cutting through a dark room, and the virtuous life fills its house with the dawn. Now, the height of virtue is to love God (Matt. 22:37-38), and the greatest way that we love God is to keep His commands (John 14:23-24). And what is His greatest command? That we should believe on the Lord Jesus Christ (I John 3:22-23), for He is the roadway to and source of all light (John 1:4-5; 8:12; 12:44-46; I John 1:5-7). In short, to believe in Christ is the ultimate sanity because Christ is the ultimate sanity, for He brings us to God. But for those who would diverge from His path, they will only find Hell, the home of all madmen who turn to their own way.

-Jon Vowell (c) 2012