The Dark Night Rises
The murderer rises in the dark …
Job 24:14
Surely you’ve heard about the massacre at a Colorado premiere of The Dark Knight Rises. The headline in my newspaper this morning reads, “The Search for ‘Why?’”
I can tell you why.
And I can tell you why most in our culture will answer this question incorrectly.
Let me start with a story ... Batman is my favorite superhero. In the seventies, I grew up watching reruns of the campy sixties version of the Caped Crusader. Now, it may sound strange, but crime dramas and mysteries have traditionally expressed a Christian Worldview.
Really? Think about it … The setting is good versus evil. The plot is a passionate pursuit of truth (by the main character, a detective). And while the story starts with sin and violence (a biblical given), the whole point is the restoration of justice and order (a biblical goal).
We used to call our comic book characters “super” and “heroes.” In my Batman of old, the violence was even cartoonish and implied. I know it seems hokey by today’s standards, but rather than showing a punch land, the comic-book word “Pow!” would flash across the screen.
“Hokey?” Maybe. But what are today’s standards? It is an increasingly graphic portrayal of violence.
Conflicting reports say this weekend’s shooter was dressed as the villain from the last Batman movie. “The Joker” from 2008’s Dark Night was perhaps the most evil character ever portrayed on screen. A good actor is supposed to “inhabit the character” he’s portraying. It is said, that just the opposite happened with actor Heath Ledger.
Did the sickness of the Joker so thoroughly inhabit a young actor that it led to his overdose and death at age 28?
Did the sickness of the Joker so thoroughly inhabit another young man that he shot 58 at the next Batman premiere?
Wait!
Here’s the problem with the question of “Why?” … Most will focus on what went wrong in one young man’s life to prompt such cruelty. Yes, some sadistic switch flipped in one young brain, but that’s not really the problem. The real problem keeps coursing – daily and increasingly – throughout our culture.
This problem is worse than the over-abundance of violence on our television and movie screens. It’s worse even than constantly desensitizing our children to shooting human beings in their video games. The problem is that we’ve completely pulled the carpet out from under our children and our society.
While it sounds compassionate in our post-modern world to teach our kids to be sensitive to each individual’s and each culture’s diversity, what we’re really doing is teaching them that there is no ultimate right and wrong. And that’s just plain wrong.
If there is a God, then there is a Truth – one truth. Indeed, that is the reason that America’s collective heart is breaking over this movie theater massacre. Deep down – and created in God’s image – we yearn for Truth and justice and “heroes” that are “super.”
And yet at the same time, hundreds of millions of dollars will be spent this week on a complex and brooding comic book character that was the backdrop for these murders.
Why?
Thousands of years ago, a man named Job was fond of that question too. In a section entitled, “Job Complains of Violence on the Earth,” this grieving old man cried …
"1 Why are … 13 those …
who rebel against the light,
who are not acquainted with its ways,
and do not stay in its paths[?]
14 The murderer RISES in the DARK,
that he may kill the poor and needy;
and in the NIGHT he is as a thief.
15 The eye of the adulterer
also waits for the twilight,
saying, 'No eye will see me' …
Job 24
It’s an age-old question. But there is an age-old answer too. In 2 Chronicles 7:14, the Lord says to his people …
if my people who are called by my name
humble themselves,
and pray
and seek my face,
and turn from their wicked ways,
then I will hear from heaven,
and will forgive their sin and heal their land.
The movie at the center of this tragedy is The Dark Knight Rises. It’s a play on words, but let us pray …
· that The Dark Night Ceases to Rise across our nation and throughout this culture;
· that Americans – starting with us and for our children’s sake – will start to pay only for movies where the heroes are more super than dark, brooding, and violent;
· that Americans – starting with us and for our children’s sake – will stop desensitizing our souls with video games in which we even figuratively shoot at human beings;
· that Christians – starting with us and for our children’s sake – will testify to the true Truth, instead of permitting the continued encroachment of relativism and ambiguity;
· that we as a nation – starting with us and for our children’s sake – will follow the call of 2 Chronicles 7:14.
In Christ’s Love,
a Pastor who prays
for our land to be healed
