Dark Knight and the Dark night of the soul

Monday July 28, 2008

Categories: General Thoughts, On the Road, Show Content

Last week we had a few days off from the tour and Tony and I went to see Dark Knight, the new Batman franchise film. Indeed this film was more sinister and melancholy than so many super hero movies--and yet more realistic in terms of the ambiguities involved in trying to be a helpful contribution to the world.

The "good guys" in the film are tortured by the task of subduing an insane while responding to popular criticism from those they hoped to protect and help. This seems a lot like the real world, where it is so easy to be misunderstood. We have had critics attend our shows in various cities on this tour--and it is curious to watch them scribbling in their notebooks as we whoop it up on the stage or share deeply from our life stories. Whether intentional or not, Dark Knight resonates with the term dark night... of the soul.

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Filed Under: Batman, Dark Knight, Dark Night of the Soul, St. John of the Cross

posted by Mark Scandrette @12:55pm Permalink email icon

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Jimmy

July 29, 2008 12:02 AM

I agree. I've been thinking a lot about how our insistencies on the "absolute" nature of truth are more of a reaction to what we see "in the world" rather than a response to the working of the Spirit and His Word in our hearts. Reactions are the product of fear, but we are called to walk in love. Perfect love casts out fear. The fact of the matter is that while there are absolutes, we're still processing life through a biased and limited filter (and perhaps this is where faith comes in, that God fills in the gaps of our own personal inconsistencies?). In the fullness of time, the picture is made clear, but for the moment, the wheat and the tares grow together (Mt. 13:24-30,36-43). Now if you will have an ear, then hear (hehehe;). The Joker is the Enemy, Harvey Dent is the man who works by his own religious attempts, and Batman is one of the few who find the way to life. Our enemy is crafty, not just some simplistically predictable "bad guy". Usually he won't flat out lie, he'll just bend the truth and use our emotions (and plans) against us. The man who tries to be good on his own merit will soon find that even the best of us fall, but the man who sees that the systems we create to protect ourselves, good as they may be, are not ends, just means, realizes that life ultimately requires us to go further. In short, simplicity comes once complexity has been processed (i.e. taking everything in the grey and sorting it out into fine lines of binary code is much like working through a rubix cube - you often have to go backward before you can go forward), our battle is constant, our enemy is clever, and no matter how "good" anyone appears to be, the only place we can safely put our faith is in God.