HOPE AND HORROR: THEOLOGY AND THE BONE TEMPLE
Photo by Quinn Korsune on Unsplash. Image description: light shines in on a patch of land between abandoned, dilapidated buildings.
When God appears to be dead, what options are available for human beings trying to eke out a life? When very foundations of relationship, order, and life itself utterly break, nihilism seems logical—but even when we lose objective meaning, we can choose to pursue either destruction or hope to their absurd ends. And then, of course, there’s the question for every generation of Christians who, while believing that God is very much alive, wonder where Jesus is in the midst of the hells humans create for ourselves.
Such are the questions that run through my mind while sipping a fountain soda and watching an alpha zombie eat brains.
On a wintry Saturday evening, my husband and I decided to trek across poorly plowed roads to the movie theater to watch 28 Years Later: The Bone Temple. Having just watched 28 Years Later on one of those lost days between Christmas and New Year’s Day, I was eager to see the next installment in the zombie apocalypse series (which began in 2002 with 28 Days Later).
The shared premise of these films is a “rage virus” that was leaked from a lab and has ripped through the United Kingdom. Once they contract the virus, the “infected”, in mere seconds, morph into rapacious monsters who attack anyone and everyone around them—eating some, infecting others. The virus is so contagious, and the infected so dangerous, that the whole world has quarantined (or one might also say abandoned) the UK, maintaining a multinational naval blockade to contain the infected—and the survivors trapped with them.
In 28 Years Later and The Bone Temple, the survivors are scraping together any existence they can, either on the mainland or on small islands off the coast. All of them are well acquainted with brutality, and all of those who venture out of their cloisters are ready and willing to kill or be killed. Understandably, most of them do not seem to have compassion for the infected, and some take a little bit of delight in killing the apparently inhuman monsters who have infected or slaughtered so many.
It is obvious to me that the rage virus is a thinly veiled metaphor for these times. I, for one, watch the continued (d)evolution of the MAGA movement into a movement of frothy rage and revenge, and cannot help but see it as an infection that has stolen countless lives and destroyed yet more families. From multiple video angles I watched federal agents slaughter Renee Good and Alex Pretti. I saw photos and read articles about ICE abducting five year old Liam Conejo and his father Alexander Conejo Arias and detaining them at Dilley detention center in southern Texas—about which there have been reports from detainees of moldy, worm-ridden food, overcrowding, denial of medical care, and so on. For their sake and other families imprisoned at Dilly, protesters clashed with Department of Homeland Security troops, enduring tear gas and arrest. In my neighborhood I pick up and read small folded zines with instructions on how to use whistle codes to alert the area of a potential ICE raid, knowing that many in my city are ready to risk their lives to defend our neighbors from the brutish, racist enforcement of the Trump Administration’s immigration policy.
Through all of this the weight of grief bears down on me—grief over the moral degradation of so many of my fellow citizens, and grief over the abuse and trauma so many of my neighbors have endured at the hands of this administration. But the most intolerable grief I am carrying is my grief over the huge swath of professed Christians in America who have abandoned Jesus for Trump.
Christianity in America has never been pure. From the early days of this nation Christian faith and practice have been beset by racism, political idolatry, and other such sins. It seems arguably true that the large portion of the church in America which has thrown itself behind Trump and the increasingly fascist Republican Party are only following a well trodden path toward its logical conclusion.
Still. Cynicism is not a balm to me. I read about and watch so many of my Christian siblings apparently revel in the cruelty and moral depravity infecting this nation and I realize that part of the Body of Christ to which I belong has become utterly unrecognizable to me. In my grief I wonder about the evangelical church of my childhood, that welcomed my mother and my sister and me during a period of rupture and chaos in our family. What has become of this church that was then my only safety, full of kind adults? How many of those angels of my childhood would look upon Renee, Alex, Liam, or Alexander with callous apathy?
So, the grief which anchors 28 Years Later: The Bone Temple is familiar to me. Throughout the film, the survivors grapple with the (literal) mountains of dead bodies, but more interestingly, they grapple with grief over the living. That is, the survivors routinely watch beloved friends and family members becoming infected and morph into monsters who must be dealt with as an immediate threat.
How to handle this? The majority of the survivors simply flip a switch in their minds. The being standing before them is no longer their loved one, but rather something no longer human. The grief is buried as swiftly as the survivor kills or is killed by the newly infected.
And all of this grief takes place with the death of God in the background. The hero of the film, Dr. Kelson, and the villain, Sir Lord Jimmy Chrystal, take on the only two reasonable claims of faith offered by the film: atheism (Dr. Kelson), and Satanism (Sir Lord Jimmy Chrystal).
I neither believe nor endorse what I am about to say. I only feel it. And as a practicing Christian in the United States, sometimes I feel like I am the prophet Jeremiah’s neighbor. Jeremiah suffered greatly as he prophesied against his own people. He warned them that by their idolatry and injustice, they had broken their covenant with God. Jeremiah also warned them that the Babylonian Empire would be used by God to execute judgement for this; he watched his own words come true, suffering with his people as Jerusalem was besieged and then destroyed. He wept as a witness to the exile. There are days when I feel like I am languishing alongside Jeremiah within the besieged walls of Jerusalem, calling aloud to God to come and save us–though it is by my and my people’s fault that the walls are breached and God’s name is profaned.
I fear the Church in America has abandoned the Gospel so many times that God has finally had it, and will answer us only with silence.
God might be dead to the survivors of the rage virus, but I heard and saw God all throughout the film, specifically in the character of Dr. Kelson. Dr. Kelson, whose story spans 28 Years Later and The Bone Temple, is a balm amidst both films’ unrelenting horrors. While Sir Lord Jimmy Chrystal leads a gang/cult of Satanists marauding around the English countryside, torturing and killing both infected and survivors alike, Dr. Kelson builds and maintains an ossuary, comprised of sculptures built with the bones of any dead bodies he can recover, without regard to infection status. He reverently prepares the bodies for their final resting places. He defends himself from infection by covering himself in iodine (which kills the virus) and arms himself with a blowgun and nonlethal, sedative-laced darts.
An alpha zombie whose territory overlaps with Dr. Kelson frequently interacts with him, and while the former is under sedation, Dr. Kelson begins to build something of a friendship with him. Eventually [SPOILER] this relationship leads to a breakthrough for Samson (the zombie), as Dr. Kelson discovers a way to cure the psychological effect of the rage virus and bring Samson back to his right mind.
The 28 Years Later films are brutal. Graphic scenes of killing and torture linger far past the point of discomfort and are visually and audibly unsparing. But Dr. Kelson’s storyline is a breath of fresh air, a light in the darkness, a spring of water in the desert, a hope against all hope. These scenes made me wonder, are those bits of hope embedded within otherwise hopeless circumstances in fact Jesus and his resurrection, rippling across time and space? And does Jesus in fact act among us, even when we assume he is silent, even when we worry God might be dead? The short answer to these questions is yes, and these are not particularly original Christian thoughts. But they point to a longing that is important to cling to in these times.
I am reminded of two strange scenes from the story of Moses leading the Israelites through the desert after their escape from slavery in Egypt. First, in Exodus 17, toward the beginning of their journey, the Israelites become terrified, then angry, because they are out of water. They confront Moses, and he in turn brings it to God. God instructs Moses to take his staff and strike a rock, and water miraculously flows out of it.
Then, in Numbers 20, toward the end of their journey, the Israelites are faced with the same situation, and again God instructs Moses to provide them water from a rock. References to these stories appear later in the Hebrew Scriptures, including the great Song of Moses in Deuteronomy 32 and David’s Song in 2 Samuel 22, in which the rock is called the Rock of Salvation. The Psalms also make mention of these stories, such as in Psalm 81: “But Israel would I feed with the finest wheat and satisfy him with honey from the rock.” And then there is a mention in the New Testament, in Paul’s first letter to the Corinthians. Paul writes, “For they drank from the spiritual rock that followed them, and that rock was Christ” (1 Corinthians 10:4).
Pete Enns writes about his first encounter with early Jewish interpreters’ understanding of these stories from the life of Moses. Working as a teaching assistant for the renowned Jewish scholar James Kugel, he learned from him that these interpreters understood the two stories to be referring to the same rock. That is, the rock followed Moses and the people of Israel throughout their journey in the wilderness, providing them with water in the desert the whole way through. Paul, apparently, takes this interpretation as a given in his letter to the church in Corinth. For Enns, this encounter was disorienting, but it did usher him into a deeper trust in God and away from overconfidence in rigidly conservative approaches to the Bible.
Which is what the notion of a miraculous water rock following the ancient Israelites around the wilderness (oh, and by the way, that rock was Jesus) does for me as well. Albeit from a slightly different angle. Assuredly, Paul was working under the assumption that this interpretation was normative and thus did not feel the need to offer much additional explanation as he moved on through the rest of his letter.
But what he was also doing in 1 Corinthians was presenting Jesus’ resurrection as the reorientation of history around the bodily resurrection. Jesus and his resurrection are the first fruits of those who have died (1 Corinthians 15:20)—we are living right on the edge of the new creation, inaugurated by Jesus, bursting forth as the new reality. As the inaugurator of this new creation, Jesus has a real presence and effect on human lives, souls, and bodies. This effect is not limited to linear post-crucifixion, post-resurrection time, but rather it breaks into all of history.
So yes, that rock was Christ. Though the Israelites resided in a physical and spiritual desert, Jesus, because of his resurrection, provided saving water for them to drink so that they might live. He did this without regarding their faith and merit (or lack thereof), but regarded only his own faithfulness and his own resurrection. Jesus’ provision of water in the desert to the people of Israel provides the backdrop for why Dr. Kelson’s storyline in The Bone Temple is so relieving and so hopeful. Dr. Kelson was living a resurrected life, regardless of the violence, evil, and unimaginable grief pressing upon his daily existence. The hope of The Bone Temple, as seen through my Christian eyes, is that such lives are indeed possible in circumstances of spiritual, moral, and physical death.
This means that American Christians who have not left their birthright on the altar of Trumpian fascism can practice a disciplined hope. We can actively seek out the good: the small mercies shared by faithful Christians, the bold public witness of clergy and lay leaders, the strength and comfort we receive from regular participation in prayer and worship with our churches, the joy of caring for our neighbors in need at our food pantries, shelters, warming centers, and so on. And we can seek out similar goods in those places and people that appear to be outside the faith as well. In this disciplined seeking we find that all of these goods are the risen Christ, whose real presence truly breaks through time and space to the here and now—water from the rock, a cool drink in the desert, salvation in hell.
