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News | Nate Talks . . . Station the watchmen
16 March 2009
Nathan Morgan Locke, Christianity Explored's Youth Evangelist, shows how the darkness of the human heart in the new Watchmen movie resonates with a biblical view of sin
[Editor’s note: Contains spoilers and subject matter inappropriate for young readers.]
Alan Moore’s Watchmen has been described with some hyperbole - much of it deserved - but with the release of the film (lovingly directed by Zak Snyder), the story, its characters and the themes that run through it are being made available to a wider audience.
I am not going to review the film here, or even the graphic novel. Instead, the idea is to support youth workers using it as a basis for theological discussion.
Watchmen paints a rain-soaked, blood splattered picture of a fallen world, and Alan Moore clearly understands the brokenness of the human condition. This ‘bad news’ is in fact good news for evangelism in the Western world.
Bound by daisy chains
So often we struggle to convince people that the world is a corrupted place and that this is so because humanity is a corrupted race. So many people are bound by daisy chains and can’t see past their picnic in the park. But if this ‘bad news’ is not understood then the hope and salvation brought by Jesus Christ is seen as irrelevant.
The conversation goes something like this:
Evangelist: Jesus loves you!
Evangelist’s Victim: Why wouldn’t he?
It seems that, for many people, if there is a God, and He’s a good God then He simply has to let everyone into Heaven (well, apart from Hitler and rapists and paedophiles and murderers) but He’s got to let all the good people in, hasn’t He?
The great thing about Watchmen is that it holds up, as it were, a mirror to human nature and reflects back at the viewer the bleak and depressing reality. When asked from what people need saving, the Comedian character in Watchmen responds: “Themselves.”
The Christianity Explored course (and CY, its youth equivalent) helps people to interrogate their own hearts and find out the truth. In week three of the course, participants are asked to consider what it would be like to have their entire life laid out on public display: every thought, every word and every deed. The purpose here is not to get people onto a guilt trip but to help them to take a serious look at their own lives.
The characters of Watchmen are under no illusion as to the darkness of the human experience: from the infected justice of Rorschach to the melancholic impotence of Nite Owl II, Laurie Juspeczyk’s sordid genesis, Dr Manhattan’s cold indifference, the bitter and twisted Comedian or the megalomaniac Adrian Veidt. Everyone is acutely aware of the truth of the human heart.
Our broken world
If then Watchmen presents to us the reality of a fallen world, the next question is: what do we do about it? Many people throughout history (from Machiavelli to Michael Jackson) have stumbled upon the truth of the brokenness of the world and the corruption of human nature and yet not turned to Christ as their Saviour.
The ending of Watchmen is in many ways as depressing as its beginning. It starts with a violent murder and finishes with the suppression of the truth. The middle of the narrative is not much brighter - though cinema audiences are spared the bleakest moments of Moore’s masterpiece; the ‘comic within a comic’, Tales of the Black Freighter, is confined to a DVD extra.
The ticking clock finally reaches midnight though, revealing the moral dilemma: Is it better to allow people to believe a lie and be happy or to reveal the conspiracy and risk devastation?
The Dark Knight (2008) finished with a very similar issue. As Batman becomes a scapegoat to protect Harvey Dent’s reputation, we are being told that when the truth hurts it is better to keep people in the dark in order to preserve hope.
The truth that transforms
The link here must be to the credibility of the resurrection of Jesus, and week six of the Christianity Explored course looks at the biblical account. There has been some discussion as to the appropriateness of Christianity Explored’s emphasis on ‘evidence, proof and conclusion’ concerning the resurrection, but it is the historical fact of Jesus rising from the dead that Paul finds vitally important:
“And if Christ has not been raised, our preaching is useless and so is your faith.”
1 Corinthians 15:14 (NIV)
The gospel of Jesus Christ is either true, and therefore the greatest news in the world, or it is false and is therefore a cruel deception, as C S Lewis remarks in an essay from God in the Dock:
“Christianity, if false, is of no importance, and if true, of infinite importance. The only thing it cannot be is moderately important.”
Although most UK youth group members are under the legal age required to view the Watchmen film (18 years old) we must not be so naïve as to suppose that some young people will not see it.
For prayerful consideration
Equally, as Christian adults – men in particular - we cannot be naïve about the capacity of intense audio-visual media to manipulate our feelings and perceptions. I would therefore encourage youth workers to read the novel in order to be able to discuss the issues Watchmen raises, and for its literary brilliance.
Just remember though, despite the scenes of brutal violence and sexual immorality, the soul-draining perspective, the incessant motifs of impending doom and the futility of it all, remember 1 Peter 1:3:
“Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ! In his great mercy he has given us new birth into a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead. . .”
More
About the CY evangelistic course
Book See why CY youth training conferences
More devotionals by Nate
Tell us your take on using Watchmen evangelistically
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