We know a guy who got religion a few years ago at the same church retreat where, for the first time, I dragged out my guitar to play old timey three- and- four chord religious numbers. He wasn’t the only one. The retreat did something for all of us, even though much of it was as cheesy as a room full of Packer’s fans. Little did we know that this was only the honeymoon. One older woman, for instance, was inspired to fanaticism because she began to see signs and wonders everywhere (it was she who helped me see the faces in the scroll of Isaiah in the Museum of Scrolls in Jerusalem). She no longer does, describing herself as “dry.” She is not bitter, as we all know God works in His own way, but she is not happy about it. We might even say that, once the magic was taken away, she is unhappier now than before, although I don’t know that for sure. But I do think that of this aforementioned guy. He, too, had wonders revealed to him, which must have been marvelous until the Church revealed a wonder of its own.
Divorce. Thirty years before, he had married his current wife in a church service. She had been married briefly before, and had gotten divorced without having children. The cut was clean and there were no complications of any unusual sort in the next thirty years of marriage until after the retreat. It was then that this guy found out that, because his wife had been married in a church the first time, she could not marry again in the name of the Catholic Church until she had her first marriage annulled. She had not “gotten religion” along with him at the retreat, but put up with his first attempt at the annulment. When that was declined, she said “never again” and left for a Protestant church. At this time, this guy can’t take communion and is considered to be committing a mortal sin – that’s the kind that sends you to hell – every time he has sex with his wife of thirty years. Now they seem to be having trouble with their marriage. It might just be that the rules of the Catholic Church will cause the two to get a divorce. Unless she then concedes to try again for an annulment with him, which is unlikely, the guy will never be able to get married again or, of course, have sex without risking eternal damnation.
It seems we are often led by a carrot and then clobbered by a stick. For me, this poor man is suffering from the kind of legalism that poisoned the scribes and Pharisees. It was Jesus who called them hypocrites because they only knew the law from the outside, not from the heart. In fact, according to Christianity, many of the laws, such as those prescribing food, were put into place to condition the people for the future to do Christ’s will. And what Christ’s will was, was that we should love God with all our hearts, and our neighbors as ourselves. Needless to say, eating shell fish was not credited as part of that.
In the same vein, neither do I think the sin of this “guy” is a sin at all. Rather, he is suffering under a law that was made to keep people from using one another as sexual playthings. The letter of the law, if it is not pointed towards this very good end, should be meaningless, as is eating shellfish. And yet the Church will not give in. It is simply considered truth and that is that. Talk about your scribes and Pharisees.
However, the issue at the heart of it all is sin, which certainly does exist. As silly as it may be, sometimes we find the heart of real sin most readily in fictional movies. I certainly think I did in the Fargo series on Netflix, made in the same spirit as the movie of the same name.
It begins in Bemidji, a small town in northern Minnesota that is the only place of any size between Duluth and Fargo, North Dakota. The series paints the people there as ludicrously stereotypical American Nordics, who face the eternally frozen world with a blank politeness that makes the rest of us laugh. We suspect that it is too good to be real, and for Lester, the middle-aged looser who barely makes a living selling life insurance, we find this to be true. It begins with him being pushed around by the old high school bully, against whom Lester is pathetically helpless. He has his nose broken in the incident, and while waiting to be treated in the emergency room, meets another man who also has suffered some damage to his face. The other man – played by a devious Billy Bob Thornton – finally gets the lowdown on what happened to Lester, then tells him that, if it were he, he would kill the bully. Lester laughs nervously, but Billy Bob continues. In fact, he says, I’ll do you the favor and kill the guy for you. “Just tell me yes or no.” Lester is confused, and as he thinks about this proposal he is asked by the nurse if he is Lester. He says “yes.” After treatment, he goes home to a wife who berates him for being such a looser, and who tells him flatly that she should have married the good one, his younger brother. He has had a very bad and weird day.
Not long after, he finds that the bully has been murdered – stabbed in the neck while “busy” at a house of ill-repute. He is contacted by police as a possible witness to the stranger, Billy Bob, who was known to be at the emergency room at the same time as he. Confused and upset, he goes home to the wife, who berates him again, this time attacking him for his sexual performance. They are in the basement trying to fix an old washing machine, and he grabs the nearest tool, a ball-peen hammer, and whacks her on the head. She looks at him cross-eyed until blood spirits out and she falls to the floor. For a few seconds, Lester is appalled. Then he fully snaps, falling on her with the hammer until her head is crushed to near mush. He has now become a murderer.
His new identity is at first frightening, but as the series moves on and he gets away with things, he begins to build confidence in himself. He feels powerful for the first time in his life. He marries a beautiful and much younger woman, gets “salesman of the year,” a big house and, most importantly, the adulation of everyone. He loses all sense of guilt and becomes a predator, in the mold of the assassin, Billy Bob. For him, self-centered evil has taken over his life, and he has never been happier.
That is why rules are made. The movie makes it clear that we are all potential predators. As the old fable tells us, we must never entertain temptation, as this is the nose of the camel in the tent that eventually will be followed by the entire camel. The rules of the Catholic Church mean to be so unyielding that the faithful will not even entertain breaking them; and if broken, those miscreants must serve as an example to others. The Fall of Man is real; we all are capable of evil. Like Lester, we might not only come to act with evil intent, but come to prosper from it, and with that, come to love being evil incarnate ourselves.
But I cannot forget the Pharisees. In quiet moments of spiritual meditation, a similar picture always arises in my mind. I have described it in these essays before; it is of a sandy beach empty of people, with a jagged cliff behind it and a still, infinite sea before it. It speaks as the Holy Spirit, and in this, all the strife and turmoil and emotion of human life have been bypassed as so much dross. In this, evil is envisioned as turning one’s back towards the sea and one’s face to the harsh land beyond the cliff. In this, evil is the concern over the dross to the exclusion of the vast holiness of our eternal nature. Evil becomes, then, exactly as we have been taught: a devouring spirit of egotism. It might not smash a woman’s head to pulp, but it will train our sight away from the shore leading to the sea. The moral overtones are not clear here, but the meaning is the same: we will lose God and our eternity with Him with a selfish outlook. Here, we see religious legalism as just that: a structure built by man to facilitate the holy, but not the holy itself. If it leads elsewhere than towards God, it proves that it has become the law of the prideful Pharisees.
It is often very hard or impossible to determine the final effects of religious legalism. Maybe, in the case of our example of the problem marriage, dissolution of that marriage or celibacy would turn out to be better for both. Ultimately, however, it is left to the Holy Spirit to decide. If it clearly says “eat with lepers,” then eat with lepers; and if it says “drop your nets – and your sins – and follow me,” then drop everything and walk with uncommon faith towards the sea.
We know a guy who got religion a few years ago at the same church retreat where, for the first time, I dragged out my guitar to play old timey three- and- four chord religious numbers. He wasn’t the only one. The retreat did something for all of us, even though much of it was as cheesy as a room full of Packer’s fans. Little did we know that this was only the honeymoon. One older woman, for instance, was inspired to fanaticism because she began to see signs and wonders everywhere (it was she who helped me see the faces in the scroll of Isaiah in the Museum of Scrolls in Jerusalem). She no longer does, describing herself as “dry.” She is not bitter, as we all know God works in His own way, but she is not happy about it. We might even say that, once the magic was taken away, she is unhappier now than before, although I don’t know that for sure. But I do think that of this aforementioned guy. He, too, had wonders revealed to him, which must have been marvelous until the Church revealed a wonder of its own.
Divorce. Thirty years before, he had married his current wife in a church service. She had been married briefly before, and had gotten divorced without having children. The cut was clean and there were no complications of any unusual sort in the next thirty years of marriage until after the retreat. It was then that this guy found out that, because his wife had been married in a church the first time, she could not marry again in the name of the Catholic Church until she had her first marriage annulled. She had not “gotten religion” along with him at the retreat, but put up with his first attempt at the annulment. When that was declined, she said “never again” and left for a Protestant church. At this time, this guy can’t take communion and is considered to be committing a mortal sin – that’s the kind that sends you to hell – every time he has sex with his wife of thirty years. Now they seem to be having trouble with their marriage. It might just be that the rules of the Catholic Church will cause the two to get a divorce. Unless she then concedes to try again for an annulment with him, which is unlikely, the guy will never be able to get married again or, of course, have sex without risking eternal damnation.
It seems we are often led by a carrot and then clobbered by a stick. For me, this poor man is suffering from the kind of legalism that poisoned the scribes and Pharisees. It was Jesus who called them hypocrites because they only knew the law from the outside, not from the heart. In fact, according to Christianity, many of the laws, such as those prescribing food, were put into place to condition the people for the future to do Christ’s will. And what Christ’s will was, was that we should love God with all our hearts, and our neighbors as ourselves. Needless to say, eating shell fish was not credited as part of that.
In the same vein, neither do I think the sin of this “guy” is a sin at all. Rather, he is suffering under a law that was made to keep people from using one another as sexual playthings. The letter of the law, if it is not pointed towards this very good end, should be meaningless, as is eating shellfish. And yet the Church will not give in. It is simply considered truth and that is that. Talk about your scribes and Pharisees.
However, the issue at the heart of it all is sin, which certainly does exist. As silly as it may be, sometimes we find the heart of real sin most readily in fictional movies. I certainly think I did in the Fargo series on Netflix, made in the same spirit as the movie of the same name.
It begins in Bemidji, a small town in northern Minnesota that is the only place of any size between Duluth and Fargo, North Dakota. The series paints the people there as ludicrously stereotypical American Nordics, who face the eternally frozen world with a blank politeness that makes the rest of us laugh. We suspect that it is too good to be real, and for Lester, the middle-aged looser who barely makes a living selling life insurance, we find this to be true. It begins with him being pushed around by the old high school bully, against whom Lester is pathetically helpless. He has his nose broken in the incident, and while waiting to be treated in the emergency room, meets another man who also has suffered some damage to his face. The other man – played by a devious Billy Bob Thornton – finally gets the lowdown on what happened to Lester, then tells him that, if it were he, he would kill the bully. Lester laughs nervously, but Billy Bob continues. In fact, he says, I’ll do you the favor and kill the guy for you. “Just tell me yes or no.” Lester is confused, and as he thinks about this proposal he is asked by the nurse if he is Lester. He says “yes.” After treatment, he goes home to a wife who berates him for being such a looser, and who tells him flatly that she should have married the good one, his younger brother. He has had a very bad and weird day.
Not long after, he finds that the bully has been murdered – stabbed in the neck while “busy” at a house of ill-repute. He is contacted by police as a possible witness to the stranger, Billy Bob, who was known to be at the emergency room at the same time as he. Confused and upset, he goes home to the wife, who berates him again, this time attacking him for his sexual performance. They are in the basement trying to fix an old washing machine, and he grabs the nearest tool, a ball-peen hammer, and whacks her on the head. She looks at him cross-eyed until blood spirits out and she falls to the floor. For a few seconds, Lester is appalled. Then he fully snaps, falling on her with the hammer until her head is crushed to near mush. He has now become a murderer.
His new identity is at first frightening, but as the series moves on and he gets away with things, he begins to build confidence in himself. He feels powerful for the first time in his life. He marries a beautiful and much younger woman, gets “salesman of the year,” a big house and, most importantly, the adulation of everyone. He loses all sense of guilt and becomes a predator, in the mold of the assassin, Billy Bob. For him, self-centered evil has taken over his life, and he has never been happier.
That is why rules are made. The movie makes it clear that we are all potential predators. As the old fable tells us, we must never entertain temptation, as this is the nose of the camel in the tent that eventually will be followed by the entire camel. The rules of the Catholic Church mean to be so unyielding that the faithful will not even entertain breaking them; and if broken, those miscreants must serve as an example to others. The Fall of Man is real; we all are capable of evil. Like Lester, we might not only come to act with evil intent, but come to prosper from it, and with that, come to love being evil incarnate ourselves.
But I cannot forget the Pharisees. In quiet moments of spiritual meditation, a similar picture always arises in my mind. I have described it in these essays before; it is of a sandy beach empty of people, with a jagged cliff behind it and a still, infinite sea before it. It speaks as the Holy Spirit, and in this, all the strife and turmoil and emotion of human life have been bypassed as so much dross. In this, evil is envisioned as turning one’s back towards the sea and one’s face to the harsh land beyond the cliff. In this, evil is the concern over the dross to the exclusion of the vast holiness of our eternal nature. Evil becomes, then, exactly as we have been taught: a devouring spirit of egotism. It might not smash a woman’s head to pulp, but it will train our sight away from the shore leading to the sea. The moral overtones are not clear here, but the meaning is the same: we will lose God and our eternity with Him with a selfish outlook. Here, we see religious legalism as just that: a structure built by man to facilitate the holy, but not the holy itself. If it leads elsewhere than towards God, it proves that it has become the law of the prideful Pharisees.
It is often very hard or impossible to determine the final effects of religious legalism. Maybe, in the case of our example of the problem marriage, dissolution of that marriage or celibacy would turn out to be better for both. Ultimately, however, it is left to the Holy Spirit to decide. If it clearly says “eat with lepers,” then eat with lepers; and if it says “drop your nets – and your sins – and follow me,” then drop everything and walk with uncommon faith towards the sea.
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