Over the short break between Christmas and New Year I indulged in my liking of action flicks, the kind where good usually triumphs over evil and there is a fair bit of martial arts action. This time it was Nikita, and the ongoing struggle for a few people to destroy a black op program out of control.
I often wonder about my liking of this kind of film; what attracts a person opposed to war and violence to such action and violence, and the tendency for these films to explore redemptive violence.
A sense of redemptive violence sits under much of the church’s understanding of the atonement. It’s what makes it possible for the church to live in a very ambiguous place around war and support for the military, and refusal to give peace-making a priority in its life.
I think that sort of theory of the atonement provides the implicit basis for a country as overtly religious as the USA
I think it is what often makes churches ambiguous about the death penalty, and keeps us quiet about the fact that far too many people – and particularly those who are poor – are in prison. Punishment and violence!
That seems so contrary to my understanding of the cross of Jesus, an act not of violence by God but of suffering servanthood that undermines all pretensions to Empire.
And yet there is something attractive about the way violence is used to protect and destroy in the movies (and in real life). It is always a deep temptation for us in our personal lives and for our countries; much easier than peace-making, reconciliation and the need to share with others in a struggle that gives life and not death. There is this seductive sense that things get put right, and good triumphs, and all the evil is on the other side and has been dealt with. And we don’t need the one who is Emmanuel, because we have everything under control.
I’m not sure I should, but I still enjoy those movies.
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