Glow in the Dark

When we were talking about Christian society's growing fascination toward darkness today in class, several things struck me. Not only is it true, but I think that curiosity isn't the only thing to blame when it comes to the "good" dallying in the darkness.

The world is growing more and more sinister. Humans are inherently evil at heart, and with the revolt against God in more recent generations, the ideas of goodness and morals have been tossed in the God boat and set to sea. The US culture is pretty much in shambles. Our culture is selfish, dark, and full of the wrong, unrealistic kind of hope. And while media is often times more dark than light, I think it's wrong to assume that every film is solely dark, and that while lighter media is good, I think it's less relative to most viewers.

My reasoning for the disdain for happier, "good" films is that we live in a dark world. This world is evil, and portraying movies with small conflicts that don't need a thrilling, heroic action to end the darkness seem quite frankly less hopeful.

Anyway, back to dark films. Within those films there's the positive light that's often the protagonist or a sudden sway of events that make the world in the movie a better place, but it's those type of things that make me believe that society, regardless of dark media, still values light. Light isn't sexy like darkness, but it's powerfully conquering, and I think the only way to truly show that is through the worst of darkness.

This type of conquering in darkness is probably partially why Christians are so fascinated with dark media. In a world where we're becoming a minority but aren't an endangered species yet, we have it slightly comfy when we stay out of the way. But when we stay out of the way we still want desperately to be in a situation where we can boldly proclaim that there is real hope and light, and that idea is great, but hard to put to practice sometimes. Dark media gives us as Christians the chance to feel that momentary bravery of feeling what it would be like to be that good conquering the dark--without doing anything but watching.

Another point I wanted to hit in regards to what makes darkness so intriguing to people --even Christians-- is freedom. We talked about that in class, how darkness has no rules. In society today, rebellion and disrespect and just feeling free are becoming more and more essential. Even those of us who recognize that boundaries are good actually have this rebellious attitude somewhere inside us that we feel entitled to liberties and privileges. So no matter how good light is, there's going to be apart of goodness that's going to disagree with some part of our darker shaded parts and when that happens, we automatically rebel or struggle with it.

I feel like just having any liberty I could possibly want is what helps make darkness so appealing. I won't lie, in movies like Star Wars I honestly think it'd be cooler to be on the Dark side most of the time because heck, everyone's scared of them and they can walk around and do whatever they want. And the Dark Side empire is huge.

But there's the challenge in goodness and light. And I think opting for a challenge to obtain admirable power is better than getting power which means nothing later. So that's the end of my ramble. I hope it makes a little sense.