There Will Be Blood

Kara and I landed ourselves a date last night, courtesy of the babysitting talents of friends/fellow Grovites/neighbors last night. We went to see There Will Be Blood. It may not sound like much, but I think we went to the movies more times the first summer we were married than we have been since Elizabeth was born.

I (somehow) got to make the choice in movies. I made the mistake of informing Kara that the movie contained no dialog for the first fifteen minutes just as the movie started. She looked at me, rolled her eyes and said, "You stink." I am not sure if her opinion of the movie changed from there or not. Personally, after two full days with Elizabeth (the only person I know that talks more than me)--fifteen minutes without talking was sublime!

I loved the movie. It was based on Upton Sinclair's novel Oil! It was a simultaneous rebuke of the oil industry (or even capitalism/rugged individualism) and Christianity (or at least the North American revivalism, which still bears more than a few contemporary predecessors). The film paints the picture of an oil man and a charlatan preacher who will both do or say anything, use and manipulate anyone, and bulldoze over anyone that gets in the way to get what they want. (I especially like the baptism scenes--the first of which Plainview "baptizes" his "son" with oil and the second in which Eli baptizes Plainview in his church.) Although oilman Daniel Plainview is the main character, I find the rebuke of North American pop-Christianity to be even harsher. We expect oilmen to be selfish, ruthless, and dishonest. We may not like it, but at least everyone involved knows that they will swindle people to pad their pocketbooks every chance they get. (It's kind of like buying a car--everyone knows what to expect.) The religious version of Daniel Plainview, Eli Sunday, is far more dangerous in my mind. Eli plays a Faustus-type character who sells his soul to the oilman in order to achieve his visions of grandeur as the next great revivalist prophet of the North American Southwest. He masquerades as a selfless, gentle, and sincere local boy who humbly answers the call of God. Yet, his ambitions are every bit as self-centered as those of Daniel Plainview and his tactics are every bit as coercive, even if they are a bit less ruthless. Yet, when Eli's plans for greatness go awry in the wake of the looming Great Depression, he cannot turn to God. He can only turn to Plainview--and you can imagine how that turns out.

The hardest part of any rebuke, of course, is the part that rings true. Most preachers (even revivalist preachers) were/are not charlatans. Most churches were/are not made up of the gullible masses, but were/are made up of people who truly desire to live in accordance with God's will. But the church in North America has often made use of the strategies and values of capitalism while ignoring the strategies and values of the kingdom of God. And they have done so because our capitalist instincts are excellent for achieving short term goals while our kingdom instincts rarely achieve short term goals. But what do we do when our capitalist instincts fail us in the long run? Do we run back to the gods of Supply and Demand and survey the non-churched and de-churched to find a new niche through which we can offer them the religious goods and services they need and want? After all, that is what we do if we were running a business that was no longer connecting with its customer base.

Yet, if we do so, we shouldn't expect any better results than Eli Sunday got when he went back one last time to make a deal with the mega-egomaniac/psychopathic oilman. The gods of Supply and Demand may provide quick results, but they are not the same results the God of nomads, slaves, and exiles is interested in producing. In fact, the kingdom of God is like a mustard seed. Try getting quick results from one of those. The kingdom of God is a place where our capitalist instincts are useless--a place where we abandon our desire to accumulate more and more and a place where we learn to give everything (even our lives) away for the sake of others, especially strangers. The gods of Supply and Demand have nothing to say about this, but the God of nomads, slaves, and exiles has been pointing at it from the beginning.

Let Satan have the kingdoms of this world. I want to live in the nearness of the kingdom of God.