Zombies and Me and Romans
A very long time ago, I loved scary movies, and then a friend told me to see ‘Night of the Living Dead’ and scary movies lost all their charm for me. I was young, to get to my job I walked eight blocks to the bus stop, and I was living in Seattle, where early morning is still very dark. Rationally, I know zombies of the kind in ‘The Night of the Living Dead’ do not exist; irrationally, those were eight long dark blocks and my heart jumped with every movement caught out of the corner of my eye.
Why is it that zombies are so terrifying to me? I have always thought it was because they exemplify the worst in us, the kinds of things we do when we are in mobs fueled by passion and violence, or even smaller groups where we go places and do things we would never do on our own.
As I read todays Lectionary readings, however, I realized that the reasons zombies have such a visceral horror for me is that they are the hidden me, the appetites and hungers I won’t even acknowledge to myself; the urge to kill when someone treats me rudely or cuts me off in traffic, the appetites I yearn to indulge, zombies epitomize everything we are without the saving grace of a loving God.
Romans 8:1-11
8There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. 2For the law of the Spirit* of life in Christ Jesus has set you* free from the law of sin and of death. 3For God has done what the law, weakened by the flesh, could not do: by sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh, and to deal with sin,* he condemned sin in the flesh, 4so that the just requirement of the law might be fulfilled in us, who walk not according to the flesh but according to the Spirit.* 5For those who live according to the flesh set their minds on the things of the flesh, but those who live according to the Spirit* set their minds on the things of the Spirit.* 6To set the mind on the flesh is death, but to set the mind on the Spirit* is life and peace. 7For this reason the mind that is set on the flesh is hostile to God; it does not submit to God’s law—indeed it cannot, 8and those who are in the flesh cannot please God.
9 But you are not in the flesh; you are in the Spirit,* since the Spirit of God dwells in you. Anyone who does not have the Spirit of Christ does not belong to him. 10But if Christ is in you, though the body is dead because of sin, the Spirit* is life because of righteousness. 11If the Spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you, he who raised Christ* from the dead will give life to your mortal bodies also through* his Spirit that dwells in you.
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Wow-that was food for thought for me. No wonder I hate scary movies-they’re my dark side.
Scary movies have gotten scarier. The boundaries have fallen so low that the films have to come up with new and gruesome ways to kill to get any attention. There are movies I can’t even watch the previews for. Our capacity for evil, and to imagine evil, is horrifying to me.
I used to love scary movies before I was saved. Now, I tried watching The Walking Dead…two or three years ago when my husband was deployed but before I was going to go. I slept with the light on and my pocketknife on the nightstand. No more scary for me…garbage in, garbage out. I’d much rather watch things where good does triumph over evil, and the shock value isn’t there.
(I just realized tonight that my RSS reader had lost your feed when I moved away from google reader a year ago…you’re back now though!)
Emma, I am so glad to see you again. I’ve checked your blog several times, hoping you had started posting again. Hope all is well with you, that you and hubby are safely returned and that you are having great satisfaction with quilting 🙂
You are exactly right, garbage in garbage out. There are images that can get in your head that you can never get rid of. Better to fill with Godly thoughts.