God-Haunted

The death of God has been announced since the beginning of time (see Ps. 14:1), but God doesn’t seem to stay dead–not even with Darwinism and nihilism and existentialism and all the heavy guns of academia trained on Him.  Pascal said that there is a longing in each human heart (often stated as the “God-shaped vacuum” that hints of a perfection we can never seem to reach.  “This he tries in vain to fill with everything around him, seeking in things that are not there the help he cannot find in those that are, though none can help, since this infinite abyss can be filled only with an infinite and immutable object; in other words by God himself” (Pensees, 425).  As Paul says, “For since the creation of the world God’s invisible qualities–his eternal power and divine nature–have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that men are without excuse” (Rom. 1:20, NIV).

God is present, even in attempts to refute him.   Over the last ten yeasr or so I’ve noticed a renewed interest in religion in children’s literature, particularly YA.  Authors either want to help young people grapple with transcendence, or they’re still grappling themselves.  Over the next few months, I’d like to review some of these novels with a particular interest in how they deal with Christianity.  The purpose is not necessarily to recommend the books, but to help us understand what kind of thinking is out there: attempts to redefine, domesticate, neutralize, or even depose Almighty God.

Revolver, by Marcus Sedgewick.  Roaring Brook, 2009, 201 pages.  Age/interest level: 14-up.

Even the dead tell stories.

In the frozen north, in a remote cabin a few miles from the village of Giron, Alaska, a fifteen-year-old boy waits in a cabin with the body of his father.  The dead man has a story to tell, and it will spiral out from this point to ten years past and one hundred miles away.  Then back and forth until the story is told and the final shot fired.  That is what the story hinges upon: the cold, the extremity, and whose finger pulls the trigger.

Sigfried (Sig) Andersson is the boy, and his father Einar is lifeless on the table because, cutting across the headwaters of the lake on his sled (which he has warned his children never to do), he fell through the ice.  He managed to climb out, but succumbed to the cold a mile away from home.  Now Sig is keeping watch alone while his older sister Anna and his stepmother Natasha have gone to Giron (where Einar worked as an assayer) to report the death and bring help.  Then a knock comes at the door.

What follows could best be described as a psychological thriller, similar to Cape Fear or Wait Until Dark, where a lethal stranger invades the lives of an unsuspecting family.  The stranger’s name is Gunter Wolff, a huge man with a bestial face and nature.  He claims that Einar Andersson owes him half a fortune in gold.  Sig knows nothing about it, nor Anna, when she blunders into the cabin a few hours later.  But no matter: Wolff is determined will get what he came for; if Einar can’t pay, his children will.

Unbeknownst to the villain, there’s a Colt 44-40 on a shelf in the storage room, purchased by Einar ten years before.  When he brought the gun home, Sig’s late mother, the gentle, very religious Maria, reacted vehemently: “It’s evil.”  Einar, however, regarded his purchase (ironically called the Peacemaker) as “the most beautiful thing in the world.”  He kept it in a special box, explained its workings reverently, and taught his children how to use it.

Ten years later, it seems that the time has finally come to use it, for Wolff has hunted their father for years and will stop at nothing: a man, in that Old West phrase, who “needs killing.”

It would be a crime to reveal the solution to a puzzle posed so artfully and economically, so I won’t.  It’s satisfying in its way, but the main reason I’m writing at such length is that the novel is God-haunted, dropping God’s name as part of its narrative style: “. . . even God didn’t see what happened,” “He worked every hour God sent,” “God must have smiled . . .”  God acting and not acting, seeing and not seeing, caring or not caring, all the way through.  But what kind of god?  A good one, according to Maria, but events in the story seem to prove her wrong.

And Maria’s understanding is rather deficient.  The Bible is supposed to be extremely important to her, but she never seems to get out of the Old Testament.  When Sig asks her why their life is so hard if God is so good, she tells him about Job, not Jesus.  The Bible is important to Einar also, but mostly as a book of “dead men’s stories” and a hiding place for some vital information.  Sig’s final decision rests not on law and testimony but on finding a third way between the poles of mother and father while being true to both.  They are his moral compass.

Works for him, but Wolff had parents too, and in the course of the novel he makes his own stab at biblical exegesis–particularly the book of Job, one of Maria’s favorites.  His conclusions say a lot about his character.  But is Wolff also being true to his upbringing?  If so, how can anyone say he was a bad man?

Revolver was a Prinz honor book (the American Library Association’s top YA award) and a 2010 national book-award finalist in the children’s category, so adults obviously think it makes a valuable contribution to youth literature.  The author, who lives in the UK, explains in the note that he went to great lengths to experience an Arctic winter and to learn the workings of a Colt 44-40.  He could have at least skimmed the Bible as well.  But everybody thinks they know scripture, just like everybody thinks they know (or know about) God.  Revolver will almost certainly be used in the classroom to spark discussion about gun rights, but it’s more interesting as an examination of ethics.  Where do they come from? Is anything always right or always wrong?  How does the author subtly dismiss the Bible while pretending (through some of his characters) to revere it?  And is God a real presence, or a literary device?

I’m not necessarily recommending it.  Though written tactfully in deference to readers’ youth, the story involves “intense situations,” including sexual, and some bad language.  I see its main value as an illustration of an existential worldview: morality is what we make for ourselves.  This is how people think—perhaps not in the Alaska gold fields of the last century, but today.  It’s useful to know how people think, and the flaws in their thinking, if we’re going to be in the world but not of it.

Gene Edward Veith had some interesting things to say about worldview in our interview with him, beginning here.  Emily began her Christ in Literature series with the post “Worlds Without God“–is there such a thing?  I discussed a non-Christian worldview in connection with the Percy Jackson and Bartimaeus series, and for a crash course in the history of YA literature, click here.  And we’ve had some thought-provoking comments about Harry Potter recently–join the discussion!

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