A couple nights ago my wife and I finally watched a movie that has been on our "must see" list for a long time -- Atonement. Please don't read this entry if you plan to watch it and don't want the ending spoiled. First, I have to say that I loved the movie because it made me think. In short, it is a simple story about two young passionate lovers who are 
driven apart by an injustice perpetrated by an envious young sister who bears false testimony against Robbie, the young man, which results in his imprisonment for a crime he did not commit. As time goes on, the younger sister, Briony, realizes the evil she has done and tries to atone for her own sin by repudiating her previous testimony. The finale of the movie fast forwards to the end of Briony's life as an old woman in which she has become a famous novelist. On a television interview, she explains that the final novel of her career is an autobiographical tale about her own guilt at having split apart her sister and lover. The surprise at the end to viewers of the movie is that much of what they have just seen (a happy reunion of the lover and Briony's repentance) is a fiction (we watched the way that Briony told her story in her novel), but that what happened in reality is that both Robbie and his lover, Cecilia, died during the war years without ever having been reunited.
The agenda of the movie is clearly this: a beautiful lie is better than the ugly truth. This is not a new agenda for Hollywood. Another classic example is the Italian film Life is Beautiful, which happens to be another of my favorite movies. Rather than face the harsh reality of the real world, we create fictions that help us cope with reality. We willingly embrace "the matrix" rather than take the pill that enables us to see things as we are. Whereas The Matrix extols the virtues of truth-seeking, Atonement and Life is Beautiful disagree -- they extol the virtue of lying. It is lying with a cause, the very noble cause of human happiness.
It occurred to me as I watched the film that many liberal Biblical scholars such as Marcus Borg and John Shelby Spong (if you can call him a scholar) actually believe that the Jesus story is nothing more than a beautiful fiction -- a fiction that has caused a great deal of good in this world, but a fiction nonetheless. The real story goes like this: a young Jewish girl gets gang raped, has a bastard son, the boy grows up and teaches people how to love one another, instructs his followers to call God their "father," and then gets killed for his radical teachings about the beauty of the human heart. It is a beautiful story -- dare I say a compelling story. But the story found in the Bible -- the one about the virgin birth, the atonement, and the resurrection -- is a really nice fiction. It didn't actually happen that way.
I disagree with those who produced Atonement. I don't want a fiction even if it does make me feel good. I want the truth. If the man we call Jesus of Nazareth is dead and his bones are rotting in a grave somewhere, I want to know it -- even if it hurts me. And if Jesus' bones are in the grave and the story is just what the liberals say it is -- just a beautiful account of human love, then I say, "Forget it." Either God raised Jesus from the dead or He didn't. And if he didn't, then this whole mess we call Christianity is just that -- a mess, a farce, a fraud, and (as Nietzsche would say) actually an evil.
I do not believe that I am committed to a beautiful lie. I believe that is just so happens that truth, beauty, and goodness actually do meet in one person, in one grand reality. I believe that ultimate power actually was revealed in the cross and then in the empty tomb. I believe that the meek really will inherit the earth. That's not just some cute, poetic, sentimental ideal. Briony's fiction is an evil. Robbie and Cecilia are dead and she should have told the world that fact. If the gospel writers turn out to be a bunch of Brionys, I have no hope.
But I don't think they are.
driven apart by an injustice perpetrated by an envious young sister who bears false testimony against Robbie, the young man, which results in his imprisonment for a crime he did not commit. As time goes on, the younger sister, Briony, realizes the evil she has done and tries to atone for her own sin by repudiating her previous testimony. The finale of the movie fast forwards to the end of Briony's life as an old woman in which she has become a famous novelist. On a television interview, she explains that the final novel of her career is an autobiographical tale about her own guilt at having split apart her sister and lover. The surprise at the end to viewers of the movie is that much of what they have just seen (a happy reunion of the lover and Briony's repentance) is a fiction (we watched the way that Briony told her story in her novel), but that what happened in reality is that both Robbie and his lover, Cecilia, died during the war years without ever having been reunited.The agenda of the movie is clearly this: a beautiful lie is better than the ugly truth. This is not a new agenda for Hollywood. Another classic example is the Italian film Life is Beautiful, which happens to be another of my favorite movies. Rather than face the harsh reality of the real world, we create fictions that help us cope with reality. We willingly embrace "the matrix" rather than take the pill that enables us to see things as we are. Whereas The Matrix extols the virtues of truth-seeking, Atonement and Life is Beautiful disagree -- they extol the virtue of lying. It is lying with a cause, the very noble cause of human happiness.
It occurred to me as I watched the film that many liberal Biblical scholars such as Marcus Borg and John Shelby Spong (if you can call him a scholar) actually believe that the Jesus story is nothing more than a beautiful fiction -- a fiction that has caused a great deal of good in this world, but a fiction nonetheless. The real story goes like this: a young Jewish girl gets gang raped, has a bastard son, the boy grows up and teaches people how to love one another, instructs his followers to call God their "father," and then gets killed for his radical teachings about the beauty of the human heart. It is a beautiful story -- dare I say a compelling story. But the story found in the Bible -- the one about the virgin birth, the atonement, and the resurrection -- is a really nice fiction. It didn't actually happen that way.
I disagree with those who produced Atonement. I don't want a fiction even if it does make me feel good. I want the truth. If the man we call Jesus of Nazareth is dead and his bones are rotting in a grave somewhere, I want to know it -- even if it hurts me. And if Jesus' bones are in the grave and the story is just what the liberals say it is -- just a beautiful account of human love, then I say, "Forget it." Either God raised Jesus from the dead or He didn't. And if he didn't, then this whole mess we call Christianity is just that -- a mess, a farce, a fraud, and (as Nietzsche would say) actually an evil.
I do not believe that I am committed to a beautiful lie. I believe that is just so happens that truth, beauty, and goodness actually do meet in one person, in one grand reality. I believe that ultimate power actually was revealed in the cross and then in the empty tomb. I believe that the meek really will inherit the earth. That's not just some cute, poetic, sentimental ideal. Briony's fiction is an evil. Robbie and Cecilia are dead and she should have told the world that fact. If the gospel writers turn out to be a bunch of Brionys, I have no hope.
But I don't think they are.
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