on "the wicked"

This time of year, one of the more interesting ideas that captivates my theological imagination is the presence of all those monsters in our culture -- zombies and werewolves and such -- alongside people like witches.  I've been thinking lately about all these monsters.  And today I want to round out this under appreciated triduum -- Dia de Los Muertos, All Saints and All Souls -- with a theological meditation of monsters, hospitality and "the wicked", in which I hope to engage in a more sustained argument in favor of Halloween for Christians. 

First, what exactly is a monster?  The word "monster" has its origins in the Latin monstrum, meaning "omen" or "warning".  The question really is, then, as a sign and omen, what are monsters warning us about?

When it comes to traits of our monsters -- traits shared across time and cultures -- the list becomes rather telling:

Aggressive

Gigantic
Man-eating
Malevolent
Hybrids
Gruesome
Atavistic
Powerful
Violent

The list is rich.  But it's also telling in what dominates it:  Fear.  Monsters are horror-filled creatures that violently intrude upon our calm and settled existence.  They bring chaos and malevolence.  And monsters are transgressive, violating our sacred taboos.  It's obvious how we see the Other as Monster.  More curious is the recurring theme in monster texts (stories, movies, books) of the fear that we may be or become a monster.

Think werewolves or vampires.  But my favorite example of the monster within is Robert Louis Stevenson's tale published in 1886:  The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr Hyde.  

The reason it's my favorite are those resonances with the biblical text.  Specifically Paul in Romans 7:  "I do not understand what I do.  For what I want to do I do not do, but what I hate I do ... I have the desire to do what is good, but I cannot carry it out.  For what I do is not the good I want to do; no, the evil I do not want to do -- this I keep on doing.  Now if I do what I do not want to do, it is no longer I who do it, but it is sin living in me that does it".  Most of us fend off the more obviously transgressive impulses.  But we still worry.  What if, someday, I can't fend off the monstrous impulse?  We all know we are one act away from moving into danger.  One mistake and I can go from "upright citizen" to "monster".  We are generally successful at fighting off the monster, but we sense that the line between me and the abyss is paper thin.  Monsters, thus, are warnings and omens to remain eternally vigilant about both who we are and who we may become.  

That's one of the most important lessons of the Nazi "monsters" of the Final Solution.  Monsters mark the theological boundary contained in Jesus' admonition:  "Don't judge, because the same measure you use will be used on you".  

Is Hitler best understood as evil or as the product of social and familial forces that made him who he was?  In short, should Hitler "make sense" to us?  Should we want Hitler to be comprehensible?  Because once Hitler is comprehensible, our blame and outrage lessens a bit, if even only a fraction. 

This is where Gregory Maguire's Wicked -- the book and the musical -- become deeply theological.  Wicked is the re-telling of the classic Wizard of Oz story from the vantage of Elphaba, the Wicked Witch of the West.  Wicked deconstructs the moral plotlines of The Wizard of Oz.  In Wicked Elphaba is actually the good witch and Glinda is not a moral exemplar. 

Specifically, we see Elphaba and Glinda as reluctant roommates in High School.  Elphaba, being green, is shunned and Glinda who is blonde, rich, and beautiful is wildly popular.  Thus, we see how the fortunes of birth (because it's not easy being green) affect character and social perception.  In the end, Elphaba is called wicked, but she really isn't.  Why?  Because we, the audience, now know her story.

This moral reversal, once the full story is in hand (in the imagination of the author), made be think of Martha Nussbaum's view that we need to capture a narrative imagination when we approach criminals and criminal behavior.  Basically, when we understand people's stories our capacity for empathy is increased.  This does not mean we excuse the behavior or forget the voices of victims.  But a narrative understanding -- the life story of the "wicked" -- helps us understand a bit why people end up in the situations they do.  Another good example of this is the book and movie Dead Man Walking where sister Helen Prejean, via her attempt to understand the stories of death row inmates, increases her capacity for empathy. 

As we enter the post-Cartesian world of neuroscience, we're having to let go of our notions of "free will".  We humans are, even at best, weakly volitional; notions of moral accountability have to consider the social nature of being human and all the forces that play on us over which we have so little control.  This is an area where Stevenson's or Macquire's stories contribute much to a Christian imagination. 

There are monsters in us, and forces against us that create us into monsters.  It's not simply a matter of choice.  We are all products of circumstance.  We are all wicked to a greater or lesser degree due to the fortunes of birth and environment. 

God will have to take into account that Elphaba is, well, green, while many of us are poor or abused or raised by non-Christian parents, or are persons of color in a racist world.  

All the stories about monsters this time of year serve as an omen, a warning -- maybe even a reminder:  What is purely "wicked" is a lot less clear if we're honest with ourselves and others.  

This is the most important contribution of Halloween to Christians:  It won't let the monsters go.  We're surrounded by them, confronted by them, and in that way, confronting our very selves. 

Last night I was using all this to explain some very scary and deviant behavior of someone to Kendra.  While we can't excuse away this person's behavior (this particular person is one of the few who's ever really scared me), her life calls for both Kendra and I not to be so quick to judge.  There are dark corners and corrupting forces over which she's had no control that have helped form her into the monster she's become. 

What we Christians should learn from our monsters, then, is hospitality.  The theological richness of monsters comes from the fact that monsters allow us to reflect upon notions of otherness, alienness, strangeness, and alterity.  More specifically, monsters ask us to confront and analyze our fears of the Other to determine if those fears are misdirected. 

Monsters remind us that our egos aren't as sovereign as we'd hoped.  We can scapegoat or blame our monsters (think Beauty & the Beast here), but in Jesus we come face-to-face with the God who embraces the monsters in us.  This is, after all, at the heart of all Jesus' arguing over who he sits down with to eat.  The notions of hospitality, embrace and welcome are the core of his arguments with Pharisees.  Where they find just "unclean" monstrosities, Jesus finds friends. 

If monsters sit on one pole in our culture, hospitality sits on the other end.  We're taught to shun and fear monsters.  You don't sit to eat with zombies; they eat us!  But Christians turn that fear that leads to rejection on its head:  "Perfect love casts out fear".  We reject the fear of the other, not to other themselves. 

The Problem of Hospitality is the Problem of the Monster.

Should we extend hospitality to monsters?  Based upon all that we have been discussing the answer seems to be a clear "Yes".  Friendship with Jesus is embrace of others.  Think Matthew 25.  We must "de-alienate" the alien.  What's more, peace requires nothing less than the decoupling of the stranger and the scapegoat.  This doesn't mean we eliminate all difference.  We need difference. Otherness is, after all, a horizon of selfhood.  We need Others, capital O.  So, we must let the other be the other, acknowledging difference between self and other without separating them so schismatically that no relation at all is possible.

In short, yes, we must extend hospitality to the alien, the stranger, the Other. To welcome the other is to bring peace and to become a complete Self. 

But this leaves a question that nearly never gets asked when Christians talk about hospitality:  How can we tell the difference between benign and malign others?  How do we know when the other is truly an enemy who seeks to destroy us or an innocent scapegoat projected by our phobias?

What I'm wondering is whether hospitality is relative or absolute?  Given my reflections about toxic relationships last Monday, this is a very real question.  We are sent out into the world to give and receive acts of welcome.  But we are called to do this while being "shrewd as snakes" and being wary of "wolves in sheep's clothing".  Phrased in the language of monster stories, a vampire has no power over you in your own home.  That is, unless, you invite the vampire into your home.  That act of hospitality leads to your destruction.

The point being, hospitality is a difficult practice.  It involves discernment.  Should we extend hospitality to monsters?

I don't have any hard and quick and full answers.  But this is a question, like I said, that's overlooked.  So it must be asked.  Should sexual offenders be nationally registered and tracked?  Should you, personally, go to the National Sex Offender Registry and locate which of your neighbors are sexual offenders?  Should the prisoners at the Guantanamo Bay Detention Camp be brought to US soil and given due process?  Should I practice communion discipline and refuse someone I know to be cruel to her family members?

Those aren't simple questions to answer. But they demand asking, particularly in light of how we culturally identify "the wicked" and what I've been arguing here. 

So I leave it there, hoping I've opened up some imaginations and thoughts to reflect upon.  And questions to ask.  May your theological adventures with monsters continue.  And may your acts of hospitality toward monsters be filled with wisdom and grace.