Are You Afraid of the Dark?
I have a confession to make: I love the horror genre of stories. I remember staying up past my bedtime as a kid to watch “Are You Afraid of the Dark?” on Nickelodeon, and since then I’ve been hooked. From the books of Stephen King, the classic Universal creature features, the campiness of John Carpenter movies, the more recent “elevated” horror of Mike Flanagan and Jordan Peele, to the wonderful spoofs like Young Frankenstein or Abbot and Costello Meet Frankenstein…I love it all.
All of this might sound weird coming from a pastor who was raised at the height of the Satanic Panic of the 80s and 90s and came of age when some churches held burnings for Harry Potter books. However, if you have eyes to see and ears to hear, the genre holds a lot for the church–it can give voice to collective fears and traumas, it can give space for confession and lament, it can provide critiques of culture and society that fall right in line with the witness of the prophets.
Horror disturbs us. It inserts danger into places that we thought to be safe. There is a monster under the bed and skeletons in all the closets. All of our preconceived notions are upended and we are unsettled. But then again, the gospel is disturbing. Jesus is an absolutely scandalous figure, what with his eating with tax collectors, cavorting with sinners, and embracing the sick and the poor. Jesus was always upending well established beliefs–”You have heard it said _____, but I say to you _____.” Jesus always seemed to be leading people to the realization that perhaps their greatest enemy wasn’t the Samaritans or even Rome, but rather themselves. The call is coming from inside the house.
So if you’ll indulge me–submitted for the approval of the Midnight Society, this week’s devotions will be drawn from professor and theologian Brandon Grafius’ book, Lurking Under the Surface: Horror, Religion, and the Questions That Haunt Us. I pray that you would have the grace and courage to be disturbed by the gospel.
Disturb us, Lord, when
We are too well pleased with ourselves,
When our dreams have come true
Because we have dreamed too little,
When we arrived safely
Because we sailed too close to the shore.
Disturb us, Lord, when
With the abundance of things we possess
We have lost our thirst
For the waters of life;
Having fallen in love with life,
We have ceased to dream of eternity
And in our efforts to build a new earth,
We have allowed our vision
Of the new Heaven to dim.
Disturb us, Lord, to dare more boldly,
To venture on wider seas
Where storms will show your mastery;
Where losing sight of land,
We shall find the stars.
We ask You to push back
The horizons of our hopes;
And to push into the future
In strength, courage, hope, and love.
Rev. Ryan Young
