catapult magazine

Read this issue’s Bible study verses: ../issues/backIssue.cfm?issueid=15#study

A common critique of film and television is that they are too violent. Looking at violence in the Bible, how can it function appropriately?

I have been reading Cathleen Norris’ “Cloister Walk,” which is an intriguing dialogue on the metaphors and similarities of the writing and monastic life. She discusses how Bendectine monks employ the grittiness of the psalms and verses from Job, to lament sin and praise God through suffering. Also, since the creation of the Benedict order 1500 years ago by St. Benedict, they have been a peaceful and benevolent order. However, they study and sing the writings and verse of St. Benedict, who employs Roman military images and metaphors of triumph, confronting violence and exploring the root of violence as well.

Many Presbyterian and Reformed songs use military and violent metaphors to provoke violence, but to understand it in the context of faith and praise to God. It seems to me that film can use violence not to glorify or promote it, but employ it as a means of metaphor, of establishing connections that cannot be made other ways.

For instance a not very violent example, yet still tragic, is the opening scene of “The Mission,” where a Jesuit priest is strapped to a wooden cross and floated down a river, whereas he falls hundreds of feet down a waterfall, to a gory end. The moment is stunning, horific and beautiful at the same time. Violence in film can challenge and make us understand difficult instances of depraved life, and perhaps in very strange ways show us God’s grace in all events, though he laments them.

I agree with you Eric.
When I was teaching AP English, I gave out handouts discussing various themes found in litereature which students were supposed to list corresponding stories. Two of the themes that were on there were “artistic use of violence” and “artistic use of immorality”. The stories that we read were not violent for the sake of violence, or immoral for the sake of immorality (though there are stories like that out there). They used those tools to relay a point. They were vehicles for the message.
As was mentioned in several articles in this issue, Jesus told parables that were not white-bread versions of life. They were dark and focused on negative behavior just as often as positive behavior. The traveler had was beat to a pulp when the “good” people passed him by and the Samaritan showed love. It’s intended to be a violent image, but it’s not intended to be the last or key image.