While I was on Facebook today, I came across a lady I hadn't met before, with a beautiful gentle face, and I wondered who she was. When I looked at the information about her, she came across kind of stern, and under the heading of films she enjoyed on her page was just this one film, the Gunn brothers’ The Monstrous Regiment of Women. Intrigued, having not come across it before, I watched all of it in instalments on YouTube. Some of you may already know it well, if not and you are curious, Part 1 is here.
It filled my mind with questions.
The questions orbited around several topics that have buzzed away in my mind for some time now. I don’t have answers, just questions, but I thought I’d like to share the questions with you. Not all at once on one day, but over two or three days.
The questions are around these topics:
1) What do I think about feminism?
2) Do I think men and women are created equal, and if so what do I mean by that?
3) In what sense am I a biblical Christian?
4) Do I think ‘a woman’s place is in the home’?
5) What do I think about abortion?
6) Are people created good or bad?
Just one for today. The first shall be last and the last first. So “Are people created good or bad?”
I am not good at remembering exactly what is said in a film with such a powerful vibe as this one. The polemic comes across so strong that I am inclined to reconstruct what was said according to how it made me feel. And I don’t think I want to watch the whole film all through again to get at this part. However if I’ve remembered it aright, the film challenged the belief that people are essentially and fundamentally good. It said that the Bible teaches that people don’t start out good, and it gave some references to back up the belief that people are inherently sinful.
What do I think about that?
Well, I think people are both. I think they are inherently sinful and fundamentally good, and I think that for two reasons: 1) because observation tells me this is so and 2) the Bible says so too.
In David’s sad, lamenting, penitential Psalm 51, the Miserere, he says (v.5) “Surely I was sinful at birth, sinful from the time my mother conceived me.”
Both in my experience of who I am, and in the Christian tradition in which my faith and practice flow, I can identify with that. However, right at the beginning of the Bible, in the first creation story of the book of Genesis I read: “God saw all that he had made, and it was very good.” I am part of all that He has made. I too am good. And Jesus loves me: it would be impossible for Jesus to love something that was at root, inherently, evil.
So I think the film was not correct and not biblical in saying that people are not fundamentally good. People have to be redeemed, yes – but ‘redeemed’ means ‘bought back’. Redeemed carries the implication of something you had in the first place, not something you are acquiring for the first time. When God redeems us from the evil of sin into which we have fallen, He is getting back something that was not always so damaged and shamed. He is getting back something that was made in His image, made beautiful, made good. The image of God cannot possibly be anything but good; and Jesus says we are made in the image of God. That means we are made good and made to be good.
It is a matter of observation that humanity is frail and flawed, and the Bible says so too. This is the paradox we have to live with: that though we are essentially and originally good, we have all fallen into sin. We lose the balance of accuracy if we say we are not fundamentally good, or if we claim to be only good and not flawed at all.
I felt uneasy with the proposition that we are fundamentally bad. It gave me a horrid feeling deep in my solar plexus. It put me off the film a lot.
Something happened this evening though that took me by surprise and made me think hard.
When I was a young teenager (maybe about fourteen?) the film Clockwork Orange (which you may or may not remember) came out. I’m not sure what kind of a film it was because I never saw it, but I received the impression it was violent and sinister (that’s why I didn’t go and see it). Around this film raged debate as to whether seeing violent films made people (and as a consequence, society) more violent, or whether films only expressed violence that is already there. That is to say, do films change people? The young man who was at the time my sister’s boyfriend was of the opinion that watching the film wouldn’t make any difference, it couldn’t possibly affect what you did or the kind of person you were. But the odd thing was, the weekend after watching the film he got my sister’s set of false eyelashes and attached them both round one eye just like the man in the film. So then I knew that not only do films influence behavior, but the person whose behavior has been influenced can be completely unaware that they are being influenced – they can deny they have been influenced at all at the same time as imitating what they have seen.
Watching The Monstrous Regiment of Women today, I came away with a prevailing sense of uneasiness and misgiving, despite agreeing with many of the points it makes. I had many questions and few answers. I didn’t like the film.
But in the course of the film, there was a plump smiley lady with a crocheted headcovering and a blue flouncy blouse who had been through some kind of weird bad stuff at an ordination school where her husband was training for ministry. She had been drawn into training herself and then been considering divorce, but came through all that and went back to being a keeper at home. I wasn’t totally sure what the moral was – Divorce is bad? Training is bad? Ordination is bad? Theological college is bad? Women who go to college will reject their husbands which is bad? Ordination school leads to divorce which is bad? I just got a general feeling of badness. But I liked the plump smileyness of the lady and her blue flouncy blouse. And she was making hot chocolate for her children and giving them marshmallows to put in it. This is something I have never done. I have heard about it. I have seen gift packs with mugs and chocolate powder and marshmallows. But I have never done it. This evening, as everyone was out and I was tired and feeling a bit despairing, having been reading Donald Kraybill on the Nickel Mines shooting and also worrying about the Great Wave of socializing that is coming my way as Christmas approaches, and feeling the bad feeling that came from The Monstrous Regiment of Women, for the first time ever I made myself a hot chocolate with marshmallows. And I liked it.
So, Gunn Bros, you have influenced me, changed my habits, moved me onto a new track. But possibly not quite in the way you expected.