Friday 26 July 2013

Seeing Things Clearly

No Pleasure But Meanness

In Flannery O'Connor's short story, A Good Man Is Hard to Find a murderous thug recites some sound theology.  Misfit (the thug's name) has ordered the shooting of a family of parents and two children; he is about to murder the grandmother.  The acts are senseless and nihilistic.

Before Misfit shoots the grandmother, he reflects on the Christ.
"Jesus was the only One that ever raised the dead, and He shouldn't have done it.  He thrown everything off balance.  If he did what He said, then it's nothing for you to do but thow away everything and follow Him, and if He didn't, then it's nothing for you to do but enjoy the few minutes you got left the best way you can--by killing somebody or burning down his house or doing some other meanness to him.  No pleasure but meanness," he said and his voice had become almost a snarl. [Flannery O'Connor, Collected Works (New York: The Library of America, 1988), p.152.]
There are only two alternatives: either Jesus did rise from the dead and all must follow him, or He did not in which case living hellishly all one's few days is the only "meaningful" option.
  In that case, any human action short of taking pleasure in unremitting meanness is nothing less than God's restraining grace upon the world.  Without it, Hell comes. 

But because Jesus did rise from the dead, God restrains Hell in this life.  Hell is kept at bay.  In this sense every human kindness, every good deed, every loving act testifies to Christ's resurrection. 

No comments: