Posted on by Abe Austin

The Threat of Good People- Awkward Children

Good people, by their very existence, provide an existential threat to the wicked. And I do not mean people that claim that they are good, or which assume the moral high ground, I mean those who genuinely live principles of goodness. People who are loving, who are humble, who willingly sacrifice, who show mercy and forgiveness, who every day try to be a better version of themselves. These are the best of people, but they are also the greatest of threats.

Not a threat in the sense that there is a risk of them attacking or harming others. Of all people, genuinely good people are clearly the safest. But they are a threat to the ego, a threat to illusion, a threat to those who are insecure.

Early Beginnings)

The pattern of insecure people feeling threatened by the successful and seeking to tear them down begins when we are still children. As children, we go through many awkward and insecure phases. Most of us care a lot about what others think of us. We crave attention. We become willing to do anything to gain the admiration of the opposite sex. Unfortunately, many of us meet abject failure in these arenas many times, and those failures hurt very, very much. What makes it all the worse, is seeing a peer who is cool, casual, and content. A peer who is not only more socially adept, but who also doesn’t care when he does commit a rare faux pas. The confident child becomes a mirror showing how awkward and warped we are in comparison, something that we desperately don’t want to see. So…we seek to break the mirror.

Today, I work with the youth in my church, and I see this age-old pattern still playing out. The most insecure children try to tear down the most secure. They mock and disparage, even become physically violent, all to try and drag the confident child beneath them. They would rather a world where no one was secure, where everyone was awkward, because at least that would mean that there was nothing wrong with them. Obviously, this is not the only pattern of childhood bullying, there are many other categories of perpetrators and targets, but from my observation this is one of the patterns that does emerge.

But if this pattern begins in us as children, how much further can it go in adulthood? How do things escalate when mere awkwardness is replaced with guilty and shameful behavior? When sin stands in stark contrast to the good and pure? When “being worse” means “being evil?” We will explore that aspect tomorrow.

Posted on by Abe Austin

Prepared to Fail- Convenient Plot Devices

Movie Tropes)

A movie trope is a recurring plot element that is seen across many different titles. They are a quick and easy way for a writer to reuse patterns that have worked before, and a movie that is full of them is considered lazy and unoriginal.

Tropes provide easy answers to moments of necessary transformation. One common transformation in movies is where the villain needs to gain knowledge to foil the hero’s plan. Another is where the hero has the upper hand, but then that dynamic is flipped, putting the villain in the position of power. In both of these cases, the hero and his allies have something important, knowledge or power, and there needs to be a way for the villain to take that from them.

Common tropes to quickly achieve both of these transformations are to have the villain torture a member of the hero’s group, or to threaten the loved ones of the hero.

You can see this in Pan’s Labyrinth, where Captain Vidal tortures a member of the Spanish Maquis to extract the location of the rebel group. You can see this in Gladiator, where Commodus threatens Lucilla’s son to get her to divulge the plot to overthrow him. And these tropes show up again and again in many, many other stories.

These serve as a narrative shorthand, but what sort of message do they send to society when used so constantly?

A Different Story)

The truth is that torture and threats to loved ones have been used throughout history to try and break the convictions of real people. Early Christian families were burned at the stake, or had their bodies mangled, rather than deny their fealty to their Lord. I’m not saying that such firmness of character is common, or that all of us would hold up under that pressure, but I do think it is important to recognize that the way movies portray such moments as an already foregone conclusion is untruthful.

Whether I could withstand torture or threats to my loved ones, I do not know, but it is good for me to remember that with God people have been able to endure these things and more. Rather than let these fictions poison me with the notion that everyone has a limit on their faithfulness, I’d rather be encouraged by true stories that show that the determination of the soul can be immeasurable.

Tomorrow I’ll conclude this little study by looking at two more examples of conviction and those that surrender them and those that hold on to them.

Posted on by Abe Austin

Prepared to Fail- Common Patterns

I recently concluded a study related to false moral dilemmas, where I sought to dispel the notion that there might ever be a time where we have to make a morally compromising choice. I asserted that there are always the options for finding an outside-the-box moral solution, or the ability to refused to engage with the situation entirely and still keep one’s conscience intact.

As I did this study, I started to notice something else, something that I was going to write about then and there, but I realized it warranted a study all its own. It is a theme that is even larger and broader, something that false moral dilemmas is but a subset of. What I have noticed is that our Western culture and media seem to be preparing us to give up on our ideals when certain triggers are met. Not only the false moral dilemmas that I already explored, but any time that there is a threat of torture or harm to a loved one.

Usually when either of these occur in our modern stories, the victim gives in to what the villains want. Obviously, it serves a narrative purpose to have a way for the villains to obtain their desire at certain points of the story, but the fact that it so commonly comes as a result of these specific methods is very interesting. We may view these sorts of stories passively, but each time we see the pattern repeated it is as if our minds are rehearsing that trigger and response, training itself to make the same surrender if we ever face the same sort of opposition.

In my next post I will examine these movie tropes of how the hero is forced to surrender his ideals, and what the long-term effects of repeated exposure to this pattern might spell for us. I’ll see you there.

Posted on by Abe Austin

Scriptural Analysis- Exodus 10:27-29

27 But the Lord hardened Pharaoh’s heart, and he would not let them go.

28 And Pharaoh said unto him, Get thee from me, take heed to thyself, see my face no more; for in that day thou seest my face thou shalt die.

29 And Moses said, Thou hast spoken well, I will see thy face again no more.

At the start of this conversation Pharaoh had seemed quiet and subdued, but his follow-up in today’s verses makes me wonder if that quietness had actually been stifled rage. As soon as Moses reiterates his demands, that all of the Israelites must leave with all of their animals, Pharaoh drops all pretense of compliance and compromise. He gives a vicious threat: “Get thee from me…in that day thou seest my face thou shalt die!” Moses was now banished from the Pharaoh’s court on pain of death!

But Moses was not alarmed. Instead he approved Pharaoh’s words, foretelling that the two men would indeed no longer look one another in the face. There was only one curse yet to come upon Egypt, and this time Moses would not forewarn Pharaoh of its coming nor repeat God’s demands to Pharaoh. Pharaoh already knew everything he needed to know. There was nothing more to be understood, promised, or threatened. All that remained was for the breaking to occur.