Zombies and the Gospel
— Sunday, December 5th, 2010 —
Once a year, in the city where I live now, there’s what’s advertised as a “Zombie Walk.” On this night, people (typically young city-dwellers) dress up as the living corpses of horror lore and lumber out about hands-out, moaning as they swarm together through the city streets. A young Christian who happened upon this told me it was the closest thing he conceive of what hell must sound like.
I thought about the zombie walkers this morning as I read a piece by author Chuck Klosterman in the New York Times on why zombies have made such a comeback in American popular culture. Klosterman argues that the zombie stories represent, for many contemporary Americans, “allegories for how their day-to-day existence feels.”
The main truth about zombies, he argues, is that zombies, dead as they are, keep coming. As soon as you “kill” one dead man, there’s another right behind him. “In other words, zombie killing is philosophically similar to reading and deleting 400 work emails on a Monday morning or filling out paperwork that only generates more paperwork, or following Twitter gossip out of obligation, or performing tedious tasks in which the only true risk is being consumed by the avalanche.”
Clearly, there’s something about the zombie that resonates with the current mass imagination. Not only are zombies making a comeback in horror film, but they are everywhere in popular fiction, from apocalyptic zombie war novels to adaptations of classic fiction featuring the undead (Pride and Prejudice and Zombies is one example). A forthcoming video game is set to feature Richard Nixon, of all people, as a zombie hunter.
I think there’s more to it than Klosterman’s technological overload scenario. The zombie represents what it means to feel dead and yet unable to stop living. That’s, at root, a spiritual condition before it’s a sociological one.
Those familiar with the Christian story know that the primal human sin brought about the sentence of death. What we don’t often note is that this death penalty was itself radically gracious. After joining the serpent in his insurrection against God, the man and the woman were spiritually cut off from the life of God. They were dead. God exiled them from the Garden of Eden not because he was spiteful toward them, but to get them away from his appointed means of their ongoing life, the Tree of Life. God sent the sinful humanity out of the sanctuary “lest he reach out his hand and take also of the tree of life and eat, and live forever” (Gen. 3:22).
Cut off from the tree of life, the rebellion of Adam and Eve would at least end in the expiration of death. With the passing of each generation of sinners, there was the hope of a new start, a start that ultimately comes when a new root buds out of the human vine, the virgin-born Son of Eve.
Throughout the biblical story, though, there are those who think death alone is the problem. The Gospels tell us, for instance, of those who question Jesus about how to “inherit eternal life” (Matt. 19:16; Lk. 10:25). Jesus goes on to point out what this way toward life entails, often leaving his questioners perplexed and disappointed (Matt. 19:21-22;Lk. 10:37).
That’s the whole point of the gospel. The good news isn’t just about escaping the end of existence. Worse than that is an ongoing life trapped in spiritual deadness. That isn’t life at all. To live as a dead creature driven along by demonic desires (Eph. 2:1-3) is more akin to a zombie than to the abundant life promised in the gospel. After all, in our sin, what were we: walking corpses that lived simply to feed our appetites.
Perhaps that’s why so few are persuaded by our appeals to eternal life. For some, the very idea of life that goes on and on and on is the bleakest thing imaginable. And for good reason. They are, like we were, the walking dead. The gospel does promise eternal life, but only after it promises death.
In Christ, we are crucified and buried. Our old zombie self is finally given rest. And then, in Christ, we are raised, not just to continuation of life, but to “newness of life” (Rom. 6:4), to a “new creation” (2 Cor. 5:17).
The next time you see a zombie novel on a bookstore display, or the next time you pass a box office advertisement for some gory zombie film, stop and pray for those who feel like the living dead.
And remember that this was your life story once. You were dead to the source of your life. You were walking by a power driving you to consume more and more of what could never give you life. And there was no end in sight. “But God, being rich in mercy, because of the great love with which he loved us, even when we were dead in our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ” (Eph. 2:5).
Heard a pastor give a sermon where he mentioned a few cases of horrible suffering due to man’s inhumanity to man, like slavery, and said God’s wrath is like that, the damned would suffer even worse. True enough. But after listening to a season of the pastors’ sermons, he brings up man’s inhumanity to man only as a tool to describe God’s wrath, not as something that Jesus died for, not as something that in unrepentant sins of omission and sins of commission sends people to hell, not as an issue for earnest conversion of the brutally-minded or exploitation-defending.
No, the pastor seemed oblivious to all that, telling people to join in some kind of team that goes out and makes converts, almost like zombies. Secular movie-makers and authors must make the same observation. Some of us Christians make the same observation.
I suspect there is another reason, though I’ve not quite figured out how to trace all the way from it to zombies. It is definitely connected to death, however.
It seems to me (with no hard data whatsoever) that people fear and abhor death significantly more than they did even a century ago. Read any Western novel, and you will find men and women willing to risk death for their values (and, sometimes, for their vices). Those who were willing to sacrifice their lives for something they believed were held as heros.
Now, however, it seems that very few people—except perhaps some orthodox Christians and, strangely, terrorists—are able to find causes worth dying for. And both are viewed as fools.
(I’d end my comment there, but I should be clear: the only comparison I make between an orthodox Christian and a terrorist is willingness to die for a cause. A terrorist’s willingness to take other’s lives at the same time is despicable and clearly against Christ’s commands in Scripture.)
My favorite zombie story is Matthew’s:
Mat 27:51 And, behold, the veil of the temple was rent in twain from the top to the bottom; and the earth did quake, and the rocks rent;
Mat 27:52 And the graves were opened; and many bodies of the saints which slept arose,
Mat 27:53 And came out of the graves after his resurrection, and went into the holy city, and appeared unto many.
Is there a connection between the ‘zombie’ concept and the ancient Jewish legends of the ‘Golem of Prague’ ?
Or a strange resemblance perhaps ?
I have looked for reasons for the recent popularity explosion of vampires. I wonder if it has the same root as you described here. I would be interested to hear your thoughts on that and how we as Christians should deal with its outbreak.
That’s a very thoughtful insight into people’s attraction with zombies. Personally, I just kinda like the movies because they always demonstrate a worst case scenario (even if it’s extremely unlikely), and they’re entertaining.