Category Archives: Antichrist

Antichrist, Part 5

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“After premiering at the 2009 Cannes Film Festival, where Gainsbourg won the festival’s award for Best Actress, [“Antichrist”] immediately caused controversy, with critics generally praising the film’s artistic execution but strongly divided regarding its substantive merit…The ecumenical jury at the Cannes festival gave the film a special ‘anti-award’ and declared the film to be ‘the most misogynist movie from the self-proclaimed biggest director in the world’.  Cannes festival director Thierry Frémaux responded that this was a ‘ridiculous decision that borders on a call for censorship’ and that it was ‘scandalous coming from an ecumenical jury’.”[1]

“The Ecumenical Jury (French: Jury Œcuménique) is one of three juries at the Cannes Film Festival…The award was created by Christian film makers, film critics and other film professionals.  The objective of the award is to ‘honour works of artistic quality which witnesses to the power of film to reveal the mysterious depths of human beings through what concerns them, their hurts and failings as well as their hopes.’”[2]  Given that objective I tend to agree in part with Thierry Frémaux that labeling Antichrist “the most misogynist movie” was a “ridiculous decision.”  But I still asked myself, was it misogynist?

A blurb from “Gynocide: Hysterectomy, Capitalist Patriarchy, and the Medical Abuse Of Women” by Mariarosa Dalla Costa, read: “How much of contemporary medical practice still derives from a practice rooted in the witch-hunts that plagued Europe from the fourteenth to the seventeenth century, and burned at the stake, after horrible torture, hundreds of thousands of midwives and healers along with other poor women — the greatest sexocide in recorded history?  Women’s bodies and their medical knowledge were burned on those stakes to be replaced by a male “science” and a male gynecological profession controlled by the state and church.”[3]

From that perspective perhaps her defection from her thesis on gynocide in a story written by a man could be viewed as misogynist.  But she was far and away the more sympathetic character in my opinion.  He was at best a tool of male dominated “science,” and at worst the perpetrator of the very violence Mariarosa Dalla Costa decried.  I can reach no definitive conclusion, even in my own mind.  What was important to me was what the film brought to my attention about me.

I already mentioned how I repressed my own feelings and realized that my wife at least should know them and my reasons for acting contrary to them.  Another thing “Antichrist” brought to my attention (or perhaps I should say, the Lord brought to my attention through viewing and considering the film) was that despite the Scripture and my own experience I still harbor a romantic notion that there is some innate goodness in women that desires and pursues love (ἀγάπη)[4] over power, property and prestige.

Except for organized sports (and disorganized sports where I was socialized by peers), I was socialized by women.  They all believed themselves to be morally superior to men.  “You’re just like your father,” was not the way my mother expressed her approval of me.  But “Antichrist” compelled me to stare down my socialization and acknowledge the fact that a woman who rejects the grace of God in Jesus Christ and his credited righteousness is as lost as any man.

I was prepped for this by its inverse in the “Twilight” series.  Talking with a female coworker I mentioned that I understood why young men didn’t like the movie.  While female sexuality personified by Bella was all sweetness and light, male sexuality personified by Edward and Jacob was portrayed as dark and dangerous and evil.  “That’s kind of hard on young men,” I said.

“Because it’s so true,” she replied.

I said, no, I didn’t think it was true, but it got me thinking about my upbringing.  I learned that my only interest in females was to fuck them from women.  That’s partly true because I shunned boys or men who felt or talked that way about girls or women.  But my own feelings that she was pretty, or that I liked to hear her voice, or that we shared interests and liked to talk to one another were completely brushed aside for the occult truth that I wanted to fuck her.  And this was at a time in my development before I knew what fucking was, or, later, before I had overcome my childish aversion to fucking as silly, embarrassing and mildly disgusting.  But the only way I could be kept from fucking her was to have no friendships with girls when young, and no unchaperoned associations with young women when older.

God help the first woman who finds herself alone with a man socialized like this!  And, no, I didn’t rape her.  I did keep her out way too late—talking.  I had a lot of lost time to make up for.  But I didn’t have a clue that my desire to talk rather than fuck was the ἐγκράτεια[5] of the Holy Spirit.  I don’t recall knowing anything about the fruit of the Spirit at sixteen, though it’s hard to imagine that I hadn’t heard of it at all in a fundamentalist church.

I certainly didn’t understand that ἐγκράτεια (and love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, and gentleness[6]) was formed in me by the Holy Spirit as mysteriously as a new human life is formed inside a woman.  I wouldn’t have made that sexual connection at all.  I thought self-control was something I did to prove my love for God, not something He did because He loves me (not to mention the women who crossed my path).  Or if I telescope back in time something I know I learned later, I thought ἐγκράτεια was something I had to earn by doing other religious deeds to prove my love for God.  Simply trusting Jesus’ Father for my daily bread of life was a long time coming.

There is another piece to all of this.  In my mid-twenties grappling with faith intellectually for the first time as an adult, I was troubled by “Abraham believed God, and it was credited to him as righteousness,” Paul’s recounting in Romans 4:3 (NET) of Genesis 15:6, Abram believed the Lord…  Why?

I was too immature in my thinking to regard “my faith” as “my share in Christ’s faithfulness.”  I only thought of it as the new work I must do to inherit eternal life.  What was wrong (or right) with Abram that after years of empirical proof (and one scientific experiment with Sarai’s maid) to the contrary he still believed God’s promise that he would have an heir by Sarai (Sarah)?

The sermon the next Sunday was on Genesis 17.  God addressed Himself to Abram as El Shaddai.  The pastor explained briefly that El meant power.  Shaddai had at its root the word shad, the female breast.  The pastor went on with his sermon.  I was stuck right there—shocked!  God called Himself “Power Tit!?”  A “Mighty Boob!?”  I suddenly had a whole new appreciation for Woody Allen armed with a crucifix luring a savage breast into a giant bra in “Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Sex.”  But it got my attention.

I was stuck there all afternoon, maybe for days.  I don’t actually remember.  Then, in a moment of weakness perhaps, when my religious guard was down, in my imagination I saw Abram, sweaty and spent, collapse on Sarai’s breast, resting there as if on a pillow, wondering, “could this be the time the promise of God would be fulfilled?  Will my wife’s breasts flow with life-giving milk to nourish my son?”

Then with fresh ears I heard God address Himself to Abram again as El Shaddai.  My hard heart was broken, tears flowed from my eyes, sobs and wailing erupted from my mouth as I understood that Abram believed God for the simplest reason of all.  No one would call so intimate a friend a liar to his face.

I wrote all this (minus the “Power Tit” and “Mighty Boob” part) in a letter to the pastor, part confession, part thanksgiving.  He answered my letter, writing that he used to teach the passage that way when he was younger, back East, but no longer, not in the conservative Midwest, not in a mixed congregation.  And I realized that the women of the congregation thought they were holier than God.

I wasn’t socialized by whores and prostitutes, but by wives.  And I’m old enough, from a blue collar religious background, that I think I’m safe to assume that most of their husbands were also virgins when they married, or married the woman they gave their virginity to.  These wives either had no intention to submit to their husbands in everything…as the church submits to Christ,[7] or no clue that submission would include fucking or carry any sexual overtones.  They knew that their husbands wanted to fuck more than they did, and they knew that was evil, and they endeavored to purify their sons of that evil.  And I never met a believing man who stood up to them.

Antichrist, Part 4

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Back at Eden in Lars Von Trier’s “Antichrist” she explained an incident that happened the past summer.  She heard her son Nic crying.  She searched everywhere for him.  When she found him, he was playing contentedly, but the crying persisted for a time in the air in Eden.

“What you’re experiencing is panic, nothing more,” he said.  “The screaming wasn’t real.”

She took that in as he walked away.  Then she jumped him and started hitting him.  He wrestled her to the ground.

“You’re just so damn arrogant,” she said.

Later she shared her own conclusion about hearing Nic cry:  “Now I could hear what I couldn’t hear before,” she said, “the cry of all things that are to die.”

“That’s all very touching,” he said, “if it was a children’s book….That’s what fear is.  Your thoughts distort reality, not the other way around.”  But he had already experienced some of the “reality” distortion of Eden, and his words had begun to ring hollow.

“Satan’s church,” she said later.

“Satan!? Jesus!” the rationalist psychologist, who believed in neither, exclaimed.

“Nature is Satan’s church,” she asserted.

The earth was ruined in the sight of God, the book of Genesis reads, the earth was filled with violence.  God saw the earth, and indeed it was ruined, for all living creatures on the earth were sinful.[1]  We accept the violence of animals (and even that of human beings sometimes) as “natural,” because fallen nature is natural to us.  But the Creator did not: God said to Noah, “I have decided that all living creatures must die, for the earth is filled with violence because of them.  Now I am about to destroy them and the earth.”[2]

In “Antichrist” her husband couldn’t tolerate her conclusion about fallen nature being Satan’s church.  He began to talk to her about nature.

“The kind of nature that causes people to do evil things against women?” she asked.  He agreed.

If you continue to follow my teaching, Jesus said to those who had believed him, you are really my disciples and you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.[3]

We are descendants of Abraham, they protested, and have never been anyone’s slaves![4]

I tell you the solemn truth, Jesus answered, everyone who practices sin is a slave of sin.[5]  I know that you are Abraham’s descendants.[6]  But now you are trying to kill me, a man who has told you the truth I heard from God.  Abraham did not do this!  You people are doing the deeds of your father.[7]

We were not born as a result of immorality (πορνείας, a form of πορνεία)! They protested again.  We have only one Father, God himself.[8]

If God were your Father, you would love me, for I have come from God and am now here.[9]  You people are from your father the devil, Jesus continued, and you want to do what your father desires.  He was a murderer from the beginning, and does not uphold the truth, because there is no truth in him. Whenever he lies, he speaks according to his own nature, because he is a liar and the father of lies.[10]  The one who belongs to God listens and responds to God’s words.  You don’t listen and respond, because you don’t belong to God.[11]

“That kind of nature interested me a lot when I was up here,” she continued.  “That kind of nature was the subject of my thesis.  But you shouldn’t underestimate Eden….I discovered something else in my material than I expected.  If human nature is evil then that goes as well for the nature of…”

“…of the women,” he finished her thought, “female nature.”

“The nature of all the sisters,” she agreed.  “Women do not control their own bodies.  Nature does.  I have it in writing in my books.”

“The literature that you used in your research was about evil things committed against women,” he clarified for her.  “But you read it as proof of the evil of women?  You were supposed to be critical of those texts.  That was your thesis.  Instead you’re embracing it.  Do you know what you’re saying?”

“Forget it,” she said.  “I don’t know why I said it.”

Later he attempted to drive his point home.  But by that moment in the film it seemed like he was trying to persuade himself, more than her, that the strange visions and dreams he was having in Eden weren’t real.

“Good and evil have nothing to do with therapy,” he assured her.  “Do you know how many innocent women were killed in the 16th century alone just for being women?  I’m sure you do—many—and not because they were evil.”

“I know.  It’s just sometimes I forget,” she said without conviction.

“The evil you talk about is an obsession.  Obsessions never materialize.  It’s a scientific fact.”

She caught up with him in the shed later and attacked him.  She feared that he would leave her.  As he wrestled with her and fended off her blows he protested that he loved her.  Just as it seemed that their fighting would become fucking, she hit him in the groin with a heavy object (a toolbox, I think, by the sound of it; I winced both times I saw it).  Though he lost consciousness from the pain, he still had an erection.  She massaged it to a bloody ejaculation.  Nature, it seems, also controlled his body.

I, too, have nothing but a woman’s word for the way my body responded when I was unconscious from driving all night to get home to her.  I awoke refreshed and whole.  In “Antichrist” he awoke to find a whole drilled through his calf and a heavy grinding stone bolted to his leg.  While she was outside disposing of the wrench under the shed, he attempted to escape, dragging his hobbled leg.

She found him hiding in a fox’s lair and dug him out.  She dragged him back to the shed.  She grabbed scissors and hid them from him as she began to masturbate with his hand.  I expected that he was about to be emasculated.  But she exposed and put her own clitoris in between the scissor’s blades instead.

I remember the Sunday afternoon during my first divorce when I considered cutting off my penis according to Jesus’ command.  He said, “You would need to cut off your head.”  It was the way He knew my thoughts from afar that persuaded me He was speaking.  I had gotten well beyond the act to its aftermath in my mind.  There was no way I would call for help and have to explain why I cut off my own penis.  I had considered cauterizing the wound because stitching seemed out of the question.  I wasn’t sure if I could stop the blood flow or not.

“That will kill me for sure,” I said.

His answer was “precisely” or “exactly,” something to that effect.  I had been studying Romans.  At that moment I began to take Jesus’ command to cut off my penis (literally, a hand or a foot)[12] more figuratively, and Paul’s insight—we have been buried with [Christ] through baptism into death, in order that just as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, so we too may live a new life[13]—more literally.

“Antichrist” is a horror movie.  She was not studying Paul’s letter to the Romans.  No still small voice intervened to enlighten her.  She snipped off her clitoris with the scissors.  As she writhed in pain, he recovered the wrench and freed himself from the grinding stone.  And though he didn’t believe in Satan’s church, he joined her in worship.  He choked her to death with his bare hands, after he silenced her voice by crushing her larynx.

As he limped away, the last man standing, he had a vision.  He was surrounded by women, the victims of gynocide, I think.  When asked at Cannes to account for “Antichrist,” Lars Von Trier resisted.  But if the featurette on the DVD was edited honestly, eventually he said something to the effect that it was the hand of God.

Though Trier claimed not to know, the closing scene of “Antichrist” reminded me of a scene Jesus described: The people of Nineveh will stand up at the judgment with this generation and condemn it, because they repented when Jonah preached to them – and now, something greater than Jonah is here!  The queen of the South will rise up at the judgment with this generation and condemn it, because she came from the ends of the earth to hear the wisdom of Solomon – and now, something greater than Solomon is here![14]  The people of Ninevah and the queen of the South were portrayed by the victims of gynocide, while he, the rationalist psychologist, was this generation.

[1] Genesis 6:11, 12 (NET)

[2] Genesis 6:13 (NET)

[3] John 8:31, 32 (NET)

[4] John 8:33 (NET)

[5] John 8:34 (NET)

[6] John 8:37a (NET)

[7] John 8:40, 41a (NET)

[8] John 8:41b (NET)

[9] John 8:42a (NET)

[10] John 8:44 (NET)

[11] John 8:47 (NET)

[13] Romans 6:4 (NET)

[14] Matthew 12:41, 42 (NET)

Antichrist, Part 3

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Like John’s antichrists Trier’s antichrists were not necessarily tyrannical globalists, but people who had not been perfected in God’s love and did not keep his commandments.  Unlike John’s antichrists there was no indication in the film that they had ever known God and then departed from that knowledge.  Trier’s antichrists are not named.  We are introduced to them “he-in’-and-a-she-in'” as Otis (played by William Fichtner in the movie “The Amateurs”) described fucking.  But I want to try to reconstruct the story of “Antichrist” in temporal order.

This will definitely be a spoiler for those who haven’t seen the film.  My take is not Lars Von Trier’s understanding, nor that of the actors.   I assume that anyone remotely interested in my understanding would be offended by the pornographic nature of this movie and not watch it all the way through anyway.  And I use pornographic in a technical, not an eye-of-the-beholder, sense here.

Conan O’Brien asked his guest Amanda Seyfried about her role in a biopic about Linda Lovelace of “Deep Throat” fame: “How do you portray a porn star without being incredibly explicit?  Do you know what I mean?”  Ms. Seyfried answered, “Well, you don’t actually have sex on film.”[1]  In other words people who get paid to pretend to have sex on film are actors, ὑποκριταί in Greek.  People who get paid to actually have sex on film are prostitutes; πορνοσ (pornos) is the Greek for a male prostitute.  Our word pornography (writing about prostitutes) comes from the Greek compound of πορνοσ (pornos) and γραφή (graphē).  The body doubles for Willem Dafoe and Charlotte Gainsbourg in “Antichrist” were porn actors, and a few shots in the film do qualify under this technical definition.

Before the film began she (Charlotte Gainsbourg) and their toddler son Nic went to Eden, a secluded cabin in the woods, to finish her thesis on Gynocide.  It was a study of man’s inhumanity to woman, witch-hunts and the like.  She couldn’t finish when she realized it was not a simple story of evil men persecuting virtuous women, but that the women were evil, too.  As she absentmindedly, or vindictively, (it was never quite clear to me) forced the left shoe on her son’s right foot, and vice versa (causing a deformity that became apparent in an autopsy report) she became cognizant of her own evil as well.

The film actually begins with beautiful slow motion black and white footage of he (Willem Dafoe) and she fucking.  Just because I believe that fucking does not, or the feelings associated with fucking do not, fulfill the law, does not mean that I have anything against fucking or those feelings.  Fucking my wives or the feelings I had while fucking them or wanting to fuck them are beyond compare, except perhaps for the feeling I had when they wanted to fuck me.  I miss it.  And the opening scene of “Antichrist” spawned many a wonderful memory (as well as some that were not so wonderful).

Nic, their toddler son, awoke from his nap, climbed out of his crib, watched his mother and father a moment, turned quietly away, investigated an open window, and fell to his death.  Granted, in real life the likelihood that a toddler would not demand some parental attention might be extremely low.  But “Antichrist” is a horror movie, only the worst possibilities can happen.  During the funeral procession she collapsed and was hospitalized.  Her doctor thought she had an abnormal reaction to grief.  Her husband, a psychologist, disagreed.

“I could have stopped him,” she told her husband, apparently coming into the light.  “You didn’t know that he had started waking up lately.  I was aware that he would sometimes wake up and crawl out of bed and walk about.”  She started to sob, “He woke up and was confused and alone.”

He assumed, and we in the audience assume at this point, that she was suffering from psychological guilt.  What we learn later, but he never knew, is that she saw Nic watching them and chose not to interrupt her husband to attend to her son.  We also see that fucking is her narcotic and anesthetic of choice.  The perfect wife?

What I realized the second time through the film was that her doctor’s “abnormal reaction to grief” and her husband’s diagnosis of psychological guilt both missed the point.  She suffered from the actual guilt of maternal negligence and needed actual forgiveness.  But there was no forgiveness to be found.  This is “Antichrist,” not “Breaking the Waves.”  Her doctor gave her mood drugs and her husband gave her psycho-babble, as she “bled out” from actual guilt.  But “actual guilt” was not a category her doctor or her husband would recognize as legitimate, apart from a criminal indictment and conviction.

Why didn’t she come fully into the light? with her husband at least?  Why didn’t she tell him she saw Nic, knew he was awake, and knew he was walking about unsupervised?  Jesus (or John) said, everyone who does evil deeds hates the light and does not come to the light, so that their deeds will not be exposed.[5]  He didn’t seem like the kind of man who would, or could, forgive her for a judgment mistake that claimed his son’s life.  And she feared that he would leave her.  In other words, theirs was not a love (ἀγάπη) affair by definition, no matter how good their fucking was.

He didn’t know (because he hadn’t experienced), In this is love: not that we have loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the atoning sacrifice for our sins.[7]  Receive the Holy Spirit, Jesus said.  If you forgive anyone’s sins, they are forgiven; if you retain anyone’s sins, they are retained.[8]  For if you forgive others their sins, your heavenly Father will also forgive you.  But if you do not forgive others, your Father will not forgive you your sins.[9]  And she was not perfected in love either because, There is no fear in love, but perfect love drives out fear, because fear has to do with punishment.  The one who fears punishment has not been perfected in love.  We love because he loved us first.[10]

He arranged to get her out of the hospital, brought her home and became her therapist.  “You’ve always been distant from me and Nic,” she said in one of their sessions, “now that I come to think of it, very, very distant.”

“Okay,” he said, ever the patient therapist.  “Can you give me some example of this?”

“Like last summer, for instance, [when she went with Nic to Eden] you were terribly distant last summer, as a father and as a husband.”

“Well, actually it was to honor your wish.  You wanted peace to write.”

“Perhaps I didn’t mean it,” she said.

That sounds just like a woman, I thought.  But as I imagined the scene that preceded her writing retreat at Eden, I learned something about me as a husband and father.  I, too, have tried to play the patient therapist with my wife and children.  If she asked me for my blessing to take Nic and go to Eden without me for the summer, I would have thought, “No way!  I’ll miss you, and Nic.  I’ll miss talking with you, eating with you, being with you and, yes, fucking you.  Why can’t you write here!?”  But then I would have thought how selfish that seemed, and I would have said, “Okay.”

In other words, I wouldn’t have come into the light with my wife.  I probably haven’t done so at various times in the past.  And I see now that the truth—that I would miss her terribly, that I was angry that she would ask such a thing, that I felt that my initial reaction was selfish, so, yes, I would respect her desire to go to write her thesis and agree to it as much as it was in me to do—would be a much better basis for a love (ἀγάπη) affair.  But I thought that “controlling” my emotions (rather than sharing them with her) was the “right” thing to do.

She didn’t finish her thesis that summer.  He hadn’t even asked about it.  When she told him he wondered why she had given up.  “The whole project just seemed less important up there,” she said.  It had become “glib” to her, “or even worse, some kind of lie.”  He learned nothing about his obvious distance from her.  He kept his focus on her.  He decided that she had a phobia.

“What scares you about the woods?” he asked.

“Everything.”

So he took her back to Eden.

[5] John 3:20 (NET)

[7] 1 John 4:10 (NET)

[8] John 20:22b, 23 (NET)

[9] Matthew 6:14, 15 (NET) Table

[10] 1 John 4:18, 19 (NET)

Antichrist, Part 2

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Before I could write about Lars von Trier’s movie, I had to return to what John the Apostle had to say about antichrist (ἀντίχριστος).[1]  1 John 2:3-6 served as a preface and point of departure for that study.

Now by this we know that we have come to know God: if we keep his commandments.  The one who says “I have come to know God” and yet does not keep his commandments is a liar, and the truth is not in such a person.  But whoever obeys his word, truly in this person the love (ἀγάπη)[2] of God has been perfected (τετελείωται, a form of τελειόω).[3]

In other words God’s ἀγάπη, when it is perfected, empowers me to keep his commandments.  For this is the love (ἀγάπη) of God: that we keep his commandments, John penned later in the same letter.  And his commandments do not weigh us down, because everyone who has been fathered by God conquers the world.[4]  Or as Paul said, ἀγάπη is the fulfillment of the law,[5] and, the one bringing forth in you both the desire (θέλειν)[6] and the effort – for the sake of his good pleasure – is God.[7]

God’s ἀγάπη is perfected in me by faith: we have come to know and to believe the love (ἀγάπην, another form of ἀγάπη) that God has in us.  God is love (ἀγάπη), and the one who resides in love (ἀγάπη) resides in God, and God resides in him [Table].  By this love (ἀγάπη) is perfected (τετελείωται, a form of τελειόω) with us…[8]  Not only the ἀγάπη but the faith was supplied by God—But the fruit of the Spirit is love (ἀγάπη), joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness (πίστις)[9]—if I had but gotten out of his way.  My religious mind stumbled over John’s statement, The one who says “I have come to know God” and yet does not keep his commandments is a liar, and the truth is not in such a person.[10]

I thought I could avoid the stigma of being called a liar and prove myself true by obeying—first the law then Paul’s definition of love—in my own strength.  I set aside God’s grace, because if righteousness could come through the law, then Christ died for nothing![11]  A note in the NET on the phrase love of God (1 John 5:3 NET), reads: “Once again the genitive could be understood as (1) objective, (2) subjective, or (3) both.  Here an objective sense is more likely (believers’ love for God) because in the previous verse it is clear that God is the object of believers’ love.”  What is far more obvious to me now is that my love for God was not sufficient to keep his commandments, and all my efforts to do so did weigh [me] down, when compared to being buoyed up by the fruit of his Spirit.

Still, I had received the desire (θέλειν) to keep his commandments, though God’s love was not yet perfected in me.  For I want (θέλειν) to do the good, Paul lamented in Romans, but I cannot do it.[12]  My friends’ desires, on the other hand, did not suddenly change.  And nothing I said mattered to them.  Their ongoing sinful behavior tormented me.  Why don’t they see? I wondered.

Lord, they themselves know that I imprisoned and beat those in the various synagogues who believed in you,[13] Paul replied when the Lord had said to him, Hurry and get out of Jerusalem quickly, because they will not accept your testimony about me.[14]  And when the blood of your witness Stephen was shed, Paul continued, I myself was standing nearby, approving, and guarding the cloaks of those who were killing him.[15]  It seemed to me that since someone like I was had changed (repented) that everyone should change.  By this we know that we are in him, John wrote.  The one who says he resides in God ought (ὀφείλει, a form of ὀφείλω)[16] himself to walk just as Jesus walked.[17]

There is nothing wrong with translating ὀφείλει ought:  “We have a law, and according to our law he ought (ὀφείλει, a form of ὀφείλω) to die, because he claimed to be the Son of God!”[18] religious leaders said of Jesus.  But with my predilection for proving myself—“what I could do for God”—I need to remember that to owe is the primary meaning of ὀφείλει:  Now if [Onesimus] has defrauded you of anything, Paul wrote Philemon, or owes (ὀφείλει, a form of ὀφείλω) you anything, charge what he owes to me.[19]  My religious mind has used ought to turn John’s statement on its head.  I have believed that anything but absolute conformity on my part to walk just as Jesus walked is proof that I am not in him and do not reside in God, despite the fact that a sense of obligation, that I owe this to Him, has been with me since I believed.  My friends did not think they owed this to God, or anyone else, simply because I began to believe.

Children, it is the last hour, John wrote, and just as you heard that the antichrist (ἀντίχριστος) is coming, so now many antichrists (ἀντίχριστοι, a form of ἀντίχριστος) have appeared.  We know from this that it is the last hour.  They went out (ἐξῆλθαν, a form of ἐξέρχομαι)[20] from us, but they did not really belong to us, because if they had belonged to us, they would have remained (μεμενήκεισαν, a form of μένω)[21] with us.  But they went out from us to demonstrate that all of them do not belong to us.[22]  And I think 1 John 2:3-6 has more to do with the antichrists’ point of departure—They went out from us—than any geographical or institutional location.

To sense the obligation to walk just as Jesus walked while being imperfect in God’s love is a state of dynamic tension.  Though I didn’t realize it at the time, seeking to obey the law or Paul’s definition of love in my own strength was a way to ease that tension.  After all, no one, not even Jesus, could expect me to be as perfect as He is in my own strength.  I was completely aware that I was easing that tension when I deliberately abandoned my obligation to walk just as Jesus walked because “it didn’t matter what I did, because I was forgiven and because I was not under law but under grace” (as some of my new friends interpreted and preached the Apostle Paul).

Still, He always brought me back from the latter excursions:  Now as for you, John wrote, the anointing that you received from him resides (μένει, another form of μένω)[23] in you, and you have no need for anyone to teach you.  But as his anointing teaches you about all things, it is true and is not a lie.  Just as it has taught you, you reside (μένετε, another form of μένω) in him.[24]  If you love me, Jesus said, you will obey (τηρήσετε, a form of τηρέω) my commandments.  Then I will ask the Father, and he will give you another Advocate to be with you forever – the Spirit of truth, whom the world cannot accept, because it does not see him or know him.  But you know him, because he resides (μένει) with you and will be in (ἐν)[25] you.[26]

The former excursions (though less like excursions and more like my lifestyle) were a bit more intractable.  After all, wasn’t God pleased by my noble efforts to keep the law or Paul’s definition of love?   Who is the liar, John wrote, but the person who denies that Jesus is the Christ?  This one is the antichrist: the person who denies the Father and the Son.  Everyone who denies the Son does not have the Father either.  The person who confesses the Son has the Father also.[27]

I didn’t deny Jesus with my mouth.  I honored Him with my lips.  But in my heart I rejected the righteousness that comes by way of Christ’s faithfulness in favor of my own righteousness derived from the law[28] or Paul’s definition of ἀγάπη.  I was certainly hearing some of the things I’ve written about here.  I did attempt from time to time to trust Him with MY righteousness.  It wasn’t that I was better somehow at it than He was.  It was that I demanded 100% compliance from Him (e.g., from me when He was in charge) but I was much more lenient with myself when I took control.

Dear friends, John continued, do not believe every spirit, but test the spirits to determine if they are from God, because many false prophets have gone out into the world.  By this you know the Spirit of God: Every spirit that confesses Jesus as the Christ who has come in the flesh is from God, but every spirit that does not confess Jesus is not from God, and this is the spirit of the antichrist, which you have heard is coming, and now is already in the world.[29]  For me now this means more than paying lip service to Jesus.  Does the spirit encourage me to trust God’s credited righteousness, to rely on the fruit of his Spirit?  Or does the spirit encourage me to turn back to my own ways, striving in my own strength to keep his commandments?

Again John wrote of antichrist: But now I ask you, lady (not as if I were writing a new commandment to you, but the one we have had from the beginning), that we love one another.  (Now this is love: that we walk according to his commandments.)  This is the commandment, just as you have heard from the beginning; thus you should walk in it.  For many deceivers have gone out into the world, people who do not confess Jesus as Christ coming in the flesh.  This person is the deceiver and the antichrist!  Watch out, so that you do not lose the things we have worked for, but receive a full reward.[30]

John wrote his own ode to the love that fulfills the law (1 John 4:7-19 NET).

Dear friends, let us love (ἀγαπῶμεν, a form of ἀγαπάω) one another, because love (ἀγάπη) is from God, and everyone who loves (ἀγαπῶν, another form of ἀγαπάω) has been fathered by God and knows God.  The person who does not love (ἀγαπῶν, another form of ἀγαπάω) does not know God, because God is love (ἀγάπη).  By this the love (ἀγάπη) of God is revealed in us: that God has sent his one and only Son into the world so that we may live through him.  In this is love (ἀγάπη): not that we have loved (ἠγαπήκαμεν, another form of ἀγαπάω) God, but that he loved (ἠγάπησεν, another form of ἀγαπάω) us and sent his Son to be the atoning sacrifice for our sins.

Dear friends, if God so loved (ἠγάπησεν, another form of ἀγαπάω) us, then we also ought (ὀφείλομεν, another form of ὀφείλω) to love (ἀγαπᾶν, another form of ἀγαπάω) one another.  No one has seen God at any time.  If we love (ἀγαπῶμεν, another form of ἀγαπάω) one another, God resides in us, and his love (ἀγάπη) is perfected (τετελειωμένη, another form of τελειόω) in us.  By this we know that we reside in God and he in us: in that he has given us of his Spirit.  And we have seen and testify that the Father has sent the Son to be the Savior of the world.

If anyone confesses that Jesus is the Son of God, God resides in him and he in God.  And we have come to know and to believe the love (ἀγάπην, another form of ἀγάπη) that God has in us.  God is love (ἀγάπη), and the one who resides in love (ἀγάπη) resides in God, and God resides[31] in him [Table].  By this love (ἀγάπη) is perfected (τετελείωται) with us, so that we may have confidence in the day of judgment, because just as Jesus is, so also are we in this world.  There is no fear in love (ἀγάπη), but perfect (τελεία, a form of τέλειος)[32] love (ἀγάπη) drives out fear, because fear has to do with punishment.  The one who fears punishment has not been perfected (τετελείωται) in love (ἀγάπη).  We love (ἀγαπῶμεν, another form of ἀγαπάω) because he loved (ἠγάπησεν, another form of ἀγαπάω) us first.

Though Paul didn’t use the word antichrist he described a similar phenomenon of a religious person in whom God’s love is not perfected (1 Corinthians 13:1-3 NET).

If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels, but I do not have love (ἀγάπην, another form of ἀγάπη), I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal.  And if I have prophecy, and know all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have all faith so that I can remove mountains, but do not have love (ἀγάπην, another form of ἀγάπη), I am nothing.  If I give away everything I own, and if I give over my body in order to boast, but do not have love (ἀγάπην, another form of ἀγάπη), I receive no benefit.

The meaning (in words) of ἀγάπη does not come from an understanding of a word in the Greek language, but from the following (1 Corinthians 13:4-13 NET):

Love (ἀγάπη) is patient, love (ἀγάπη) is kind, it is not envious. Love (ἀγάπη) does not brag, it is not puffed up.  It is not rude, it is not self-serving, it is not easily angered or resentful.  It is not glad about injustice, but rejoices in the truth.  It bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.

Love (ἀγάπη) never ends.  But if there are prophecies, they will be set aside; if there are tongues, they will cease; if there is knowledge, it will be set aside.  For we know in part, and we prophesy in part, but when what is perfect (τέλειον, another form of τέλειος) comes, the partial will be set aside.  When I was a child, I talked like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child.  But when I became an adult, I set aside childish ways.  For now we see in a mirror indirectly, but then we will see face to face.  Now I know in part, but then I will know fully, just as I have been fully known.  And now these three remain: faith, hope, and love (ἀγάπη).  But the greatest of these is love (ἀγάπη).

[3] 1 John 2:3-5a (NET)

[4] 1 John 5:3, 4a (NET)

[5] Romans 13:10b (NET)

[7] Philippians 2:13 (NET)

[8] 1 John 4:16-18a (NET)

[9] Galatians 5:22 (NET)

[10] 1 John 2:4 (NET)

[11] Galatians 2:21 (NET)

[12] Romans 7:18b (NET)

[13] Acts 22:19 (NET)

[14] Acts 22:18 (NET) Table

[15] Acts 22:20 (NET)

[17] 1 John 2:5b, 6 (NET)

[18] John 19:7 (NET)

[19] Philemon 1:18 (NET)

[22] 1 John 2:18, 19 (NET)

[24] 1 John 2:27 (NET)

[26] John 14:15-17 (NET)

[27] 1 John 2:22, 23 (NET)

[28] Philippians 3:9 (NET)

[29] 1 John 4:1-3 (NET)

[30] 2 John 1:5-8 (NET)

Antichrist, Part 1

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I was introduced to Lars von Trier’s movies in a backhanded way.  A friend wanted me to watch “Melancholia” because she thought it was a waste of two hours of her life.  I suspected she was afraid I might like it and call her taste into question.  I was afraid of that too as I watched the magical beginning of the film.  Fortunately for our friendship I found the character Justine disagreeable enough to satisfy her.  I enjoyed the film more when I skipped from the extreme slow motion photography of the opening to the chapter titled “Claire” and watched from there to the end.  Less of Justine’s melancholia was definitely more for me.  I was hooked however on Lars von Trier.

I cried at the end of “Breaking the Waves” when God credited Bess’s faith as righteousness: For what does the scripture say? Paul asked.  “Abraham believed God, and it was credited to him as righteousness.”[1]  The plot turned on the confusion in the English language between eros and agapē.  It seems to me that English speaking believers who care about making the Gospel plain would lead the curve to accept fuck and fucking as legitimate words for eros.  We are the ones, after all, muscling in on love (since the Aunt Pollys[2] and professional fundraisers of the world have made charity[3] as odious to the receiver as to the giver).

Sexual intercourse is too clinical to substitute for eros.  Making love is too nice-nice, too insincere, or too dishonest to suffice.  The freshly fucked wife lying forlornly beside her husband, asking, “Do you love me?” knows full well that fucking doesn’t make any love.  Her clueless husband turning from the television to stare incredulously at her, and saying defensively, “Didn’t I just show you how much I love you?” thinks love was the feeling he had while fucking her.  Or worse, he might take offense thinking she has denigrated his performance as a fucker.  If he has read any books about fucking he might take the time to cuddle and talk to her afterwards, before turning to the television.  But a wife is close enough to see through that hypocrisy eventually.  Only the love that flows from Christ’s Spirit is the ἀγάπη[4] (agapē) she seeks when fucking just isn’t enough.

I was on my first movie set with nudity.  We were ready to shoot.  The male actor, speaking for himself and his female counterpart, asked the director, “Are we making love or fucking?”  We all knew exactly what he meant.  Making love is the tender prelude to the selfish self-abandon of fucking.  Making love is the hope of which fucking is the substance.  By comparison making love seems calculated, hypocritical, a mere going through the motions, or a practiced aloofness.  “Give me a little of both,” the director replied.

Love (ἀγάπη) does no wrong to a neighbor, Paul wrote.  Therefore love (ἀγάπη) is the fulfillment of the law.[5]  Few would be persuaded that, fucking does no wrong to a neighbor; therefore fucking (or the feeling I have while I am fucking, or wanting to fuck, her) is the fulfillment of the law.  I wonder sometimes, however, if we don’t actually prefer the confusion.  Loving enemies and praying for persecutors is decidedly unsexy and a hard sell.  It isn’t natural.  It only comes from the ἀγάπη of God flowing into one through his Holy Spirit and then out again as attitudes and actions that are incomprehensible to those born only of the flesh of Adam.

Having said all that, however, there was something about fucking, especially first fucking, that made me highly susceptible to the ἀγάπη of God.  I have noticed a similar phenomenon in other men.  It makes a sort of sense then that Satan and the religious mind would conspire to make first fucking as “immoral” as possible, to short circuit that natural progression from eros to agapē.  In the past this was achieved by putting all women but prostitutes completely out of reach.  In my day it was the misnomer premarital sex and the presumed punishment for premarital sex—pregnancy.  In terms of God’s law it was about as difficult for a man to commit premarital sex as to commit a pre-homicidal murder, since even a man who raped a single woman had committed lifelong marriage (Deuteronomy 22:28, 29 NET):

Suppose a man comes across a virgin who is not engaged and overpowers and rapes her and they are discovered [Table].  The man who has raped her must pay her father fifty shekels of silver and she must become his wife because he has violated her; he may never divorce her as long as he lives [Table].

In “Breaking the Waves” Bess knew that Jan worked on an oil rig out at sea when she married him.  But after their honeymoon, when he had to go back to work, she couldn’t bear their separation.  (I should probably say that I will be spoiling “Breaking the Waves” for anyone who finds a movie “spoiled” by knowing its story.)  Bess prayed that God would bring Jan home.  Whenever Bess prayed, by the way, she spoke for herself and then lowered the pitch of her voice and spoke for God as well.  Not surprisingly perhaps, Bess’s god sounded a bit like the elders of her church.

Early in the film we get a picture of her church.  When Jan asked why they had no bells in their steeple, the religious leader scolded, “We do not need bells in our church to worship God.”  “I like church bells,” Bess whispered to Jan.  He attended a funeral presided over by the elders and heard the words, “You are a sinner and you deserve your place in hell,” spoken as a corpse was lowered into the ground.  When he told Bess about it, she agreed, “He will go to hell; everyone knows that.”

Jan got hurt on the rig and came home paralyzed, probably for life, though even his life was not guaranteed.  He encouraged Bess to take a lover, but not to divorce him.  Bess was offended.  Later he convinced her that his life depended on her taking a lover and telling him about it.  She reluctantly and unsuccessfully attempted to seduce his doctor, someone for whom she had some affection.  She tried to tell Jan a sexy story, but he knew she was lying.  She began to have anonymous encounters with strangers.  She even dressed like a prostitute.  When she did, Jan seemed to get better.  When she didn’t, he seemed to get worse.

Finally she went to the “big ship” dressed as a prostitute.  Other prostitutes wouldn’t go there.  The men were brutal and cruel.  Bess barely escaped with her life.  She was excommunicated from her church, locked out of her home and pelted with rocks by neighborhood children.  Then she heard from her sister-in-law (who was also Jan’s nurse) that he was dying.

When his doctor asked, “What’s your talent, Bess?” she replied, “I can believe.”  At the moment where all was darkest for Bess personally her sister-in-law asked, “Is there anything I can do for you, anything at all?”  “Yes,” Bess answered, “I’d like you to go to Jan and pray for him to be cured, and rise from his bed and walk.”  Bess then went back to the “big ship.”

Lars von Trier was uncharacteristically shy about showing what happened to Bess there.  One can only assume that she was raped and beaten (and I call it rape despite her willingness to endure it).  But not showing it was the right call.  There was no need by that time in the story for anger at her attackers, and no call for overwhelming sorrow for Bess.  As she died in the emergency room she realized and admitted how wrong she had been.

At the medical inquest Jan’s doctor was tongue-tied to describe her condition.  He declared her good, but recanted when the medical examiners disputed describing her death as due to excessive goodness.  But there, sitting at the inquest, was Jan, not only risen from his deathbed but walking again.  While the religious leaders of Bess’s “church” were preoccupied with excommunicating sinners, teaching love for the law, and condemning corpses to hell, the body of Christ functioned within it (her sister-in-law was a member in good standing) and without it (Bess and Jan were not).

Now there are different gifts, but the same Spirit, Paul wrote to the Corinthians.  And there are different ministries, but the same Lord.  And there are different results, but the same God who produces all of them in everyone.  To each person the manifestation of the Spirit is given for the benefit of all.  For one person is given through the Spirit the message of wisdom, and another the message of knowledge according to the same Spirit, to another faith by the same Spirit, and to another gifts of healing by the one Spirit, to another performance of miracles…[6]

Bess received the faith.  Her sister-in-law prayed and received a miracle.  Jan received a gift of healing.

Jan couldn’t face the prospect of self-righteous men condemning his beloved wife to hell, so he and his friends from the oil rig stole her body.  “Bess McNeill,” the church leader intoned over a casket filled with sand, “you are a sinner, and for your sins you are consigned to hell.”

“Not one of you has the right to consign Bess to hell,” her sister-in-law rebuked them with a gift of wisdom.  And they, for once, fell silent.

Bess was buried at sea on the oil rig.  Later a friend roused Jan from his mourning to come out on deck.  They stopped at the radar screen to assure themselves that nothing was on the ocean near them.  Then they went outside and heard church bells ringing.  And just in case we viewers were inclined to be incredulous, the scene cut to an extreme high angle, looking down on the oil rig in the ocean through the ringing bells of heaven.

There is another interesting aspect to this film.  People like the leaders of Bess’ “church” are not likely to see a movie rated “R for strong graphic sexuality, nudity, language and some violence.”  They self-select as unworthy of its message, and are “hardened,” so they may not repent and be forgiven,[7] Jesus said of those who were outside (ἔξω).[8]  But “Antichrist,” another of Trier’s movies, is what I really want to write about here.

Antichrist, Part 2 

Back to Antichrist, Part 3

Back to Romans, Part 44

Back to Antichrist, Part 4

Back to Antichrist, Part 5

Back to The Righteousness of God

Back to Torture, Part 2

Back to Romans, Part 50

Back to Torture, Part 4

Back to Condemnation or Judgment? – Part 12

[1] Romans 4:3 (NET)

[2] Aunt Polly was the bitter woman from Walt Disney’s “Pollyanna” whose noblesse-oblige-charity was contrasted to Pollyanna’s cheerful giving.  Each one of you should give just as he has decided in his heart, not reluctantly or under compulsion, because God loves a cheerful giver (2 Corinthians 9:7 NET).

[3] Agapē was translated charity in the KJV in 1 Corinthians 13.

[5] Romans 13:10 (NET)

[6] 1 Corinthians 12:4-10a (NET)

[7] Mark 4:12 (NET)