Julia Roberts, Jesus & the Real World

on November 23, 2015

Secret in Their Eyes features Julia Roberts as an FBI agent on a post 9-11 anti-terrorism task force whose teenage daughter is raped and murdered.  The presumed killer is an FBI informant, and there’s official reluctance to act against him.  So the Julia character, acting more as mother then agent, takes her own decisive action.  The theater audience with whom I sat seemed approving.

For all the trashiness of contemporary popular culture, sometimes Hollywood dramas offer more insights into the moral law than do many of today’s religious leaders. Much of today’s Christian political witness would sternly disapprove any lethal action, even against a rapist murderer. The Pope has even suggested lifetime imprisonment is immoral.

Christian teaching has historically affirmed the punitive aspects of criminal justice. But very few are the Christian leaders today who speak of the state’s divinely ordained punitive duties in defense of justice and public order. Such a message can actually be far more easily found in popular secular entertainment, where the moral law embedded in every culture, even Western postmodernity, persistently reappears.

Much of current Christian political witness portrays the state as a smorgasbord of entitlements, not the sword wielding regent for justice. The clerics, academics and activists who make these arguments often espouse the perspective of cloistered, cultural elites detached from earthly realities.

In this vein, last week a Washington Post poll found Washington, DC evenly divided on a gun ban. Wealthy white people and Millennial newcomers favored it. Black people, many of them lifelong residents and older, did not. Wealthy whites live in safer neighborhoods where private guns seem less important. Millennial newcomers see the gentrifying city as a playground of new bars and restaurants where everyone is 25 years old with an exciting new job and a condo. Older, lower income black residents in more dangerous neighborhoods, where police reactions are sometimes slow, appreciate the option of protecting themselves.

Much of Christian political witness resembles the liberal wealthy DC whites who favor a gun ban because it sounds noble and they themselves live in safety.  For them, security against the world’s multitude of dangers is mostly an abstract, theoretical issue. “Love, don’t fear,” they exclaim, somewhat indifferent to those who have quite legitimate fears and no easy answers.

This “love not fear” riposte has been a popular refrain for Christian elites rejecting any reluctance to accept potentially tens of thousands of new Syrian immigrants. Most Americans tell pollsters they fear this stream of immigration after the Paris terror perpetrated evidently by two Islamists who entered Europe with Syrian migrants.

Supposedly Jesus Himself commands automatic acceptance of refugees and immigrants, Christian elites claim, while implying the skeptics must be less than authentic Christians. The state, they insist, is to mimic their understanding of the hospitality that Jesus commended to His church.

Jesus of course was generous unto death, but during His earthly walk He didn’t dispense political counsel for the state, at least not directly. And He was neither indifferent to the dangers of the world nor clueless about fallen human nature, whose redemption was central to His vocation.

According to Christian teaching, Jesus was not just a nomadic preacher of several years. He’s the eternal Second Person of the Trinity Who speaks through all Scripture, including admonitions about statecraft, security, war making, protecting family and community, and civil punishment for malefactors, including capital punishment.

Modern Christian political witness tends to ignore the Jesus Who rules the cosmos in favor of a truncated, almost Unitarian Jesus, Who sentimentally loves, affirms, trusts and dispenses endless generosity without concern for consequence.

Both Jesus the earthly preacher and Jesus the Lord, Who are the same, are not dreamy humanitarians. Jesus is a gritty realist Who more than anybody knows the world as it is. His counsel, as transmitted through the church, is much richer, deeper, and more comprehensive than modern American spirituality and niceness typically allow.

Jesus is both fierce and merciful, both qualities guided by His love and His justice, as Savior and Judge of all the world.  He cares about the poor, refugees, immigrants and all vulnerable people.  He also hates criminality, rape, murder and terrorism.  He appoints police, military and magistrates to uphold earthly justice.  He extends mercy and also administers judgment where deserved.

For the potential crime victim or terror victim, Jesus doesn’t just simplistically say: “love, don’t fear.”  He knows their concerns are sometimes justified and in His wisdom and mercy He often offers instruments and policies for protection.  More than anyone, Jesus knows our fallen world is in a spiritual war, not concluded until He closes the curtain.

Dark movies like Secret in Their Eyes can offer a better window into this spiritual war than utopian Christian political advocacy.  The Julia Roberts character, the mother and FBI agent, contending against terrorism, and against her daughter’s rapist/murderer, with even her own colleagues sometimes against her, is a figure whom Jesus recognizes, equipes, stands alongside and, most of all, loves. 

  1. Comment by Fyodor D on November 24, 2015 at 9:43 pm

    Indeed. One of my favorite Gospel passages is the one where Jesus uses his post-resurrection time on earth to hunt down Caiaphas and Pontius Pilate, Julia Roberts-like. I don’t have my Bible in front of me, but I believe it’s in the Gospel of Mark Tooley…

  2. Comment by Janju on December 11, 2015 at 7:32 pm

    Huh?

  3. Comment by gjewett on December 11, 2015 at 8:18 pm

    Do your copy editors know the difference between “then” and “than?”

  4. Comment by AndRebecca on December 20, 2015 at 7:54 pm

    Great question! Not!

  5. Comment by John Burkhalter on December 12, 2015 at 11:09 am

    That comes later – have to read to the end of the book.

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