“28 Days Later,” a man wakes up from a coma to discover that the entire world has been overrun with a deadly virus that turns everyone into flesh eating zombies. A scientist in New York City frantically fights off a group of dark seekers who eat the flesh of their victims, having been morphed into colorless, violent humanoids in “I Am Legend.” As the movie credits role, I turn to Christine and say, “well, there goes an hour and a half of my life I will never get back.” She then stays up an additional hour or so watching mind-numbing shows on television to get the visuals out of her head.
What is our fascination with these pointless movies about people rising from the dead to engage in cannibalism? “Dawn of the Dead,” “Night of the Living Dead,” and even to a great extent the Vampire films of our generation all “feed” on the same learned fears of the dead rising from the grave in a last ditch effort to retain what they have lost. And the only way for them to retain this life is to take the life of those around them.
Now don’t’ get me wrong. I like a good horror movie from time to time. Notice I said a good one. But these films have struck a cord in me that goes deeper than what I believe the “artists” making the film are truly examining.
Some would argue that these films are a cry against the modern establishment and the manner in which we as a society feed off of one another’s misfortunes, i.e. the ambulance chasing lawyer, the proverbial slum-lord who refuses to make proper repairs, the greedy politicians who pass laws and broker deals that put money in the pockets of the lobbyists, the fortune 500 companies, and themselves, not to mention western society as a whole that rapes the land, amasses immeasurable wealth at the expense of the rest of the world, and lays waste enough food to feed the famine ridden societies all over the globe. Hungry for power, wealth and prestige the west goes about devouring all that is in our path.
But I have to wonder if deeper still we may be being befuddled by a lie even more grievous than that which our politicians and Wall Street lobbyists could broker. The lie is that death is a horrible, fearful experience in which we turn into uncontrollable animals. There is a loss of self and rationality. If immortality is achievable, then it is not something to be desired because we inevitably become the slaves to our lust for life itself. Thus vampires drink the blood of the living in order to live. Zombies or the undead must eat the flesh of living humans. Death is something to be feared and the afterlife is not something to look forward to.
Yet the scriptures give us an entirely different perspective. Scripture shows us a place where all the fears of the world are wiped away. There is no more pain or sorrow. All things, both earth and heaven, are made new. The old has passed away. We will sit with God, who will be our light and source of warmth and comfort. We shall dwell together in peace with one another and there will be no fear, no regret, no anguish or torment for those who have put their trust and faith in God. The Bible even goes so far as to say that the death of one of God’s saints is precious to the Lord and that there is rejoicing in heaven when one of the lost returns home. I believe both through salvation in accepting Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior and when we make that final journey across the great divide to be with God in heaven there is a great homecoming celebration.
We as Christians need to respond to this great disturbance of what the after life will be like. We need to pose the true picture of the hope that is to come for those who believe and have put their trust in Christ. We don’t need to scare the hell out of people in order to get them into heaven. We need to share the love and joy of heaven with them in order to help them to not choose hell. We, the believers, the faithful, need to present the Gospel of peace, the good news that what we as humans have feared most has been over come, “Oh death, where is thy sting? Oh grave, where is thy victory?”
