Paranormal Activity

What a phrase.  Thanks to the recent trilogy of movies bearing this title, its utterance alone seems to fill people with a mixture of fear and excitement.  Our minds are filled with images of shadows appearing on walls, people getting tossed here and there by invisible forces, and 145 lb. girls with the strength and temper of a steroid injected Goku-Frieza fusion.  But are these true-to-life depictions of paranormal activity?  In some cases, yes.. sort of. I will get to the “sort of” part later, but it is true that violent paranormal activity does in fact exist. 

The spiritual realm is real, demons are real, and they impact, affect, and at times possess people who are not temples of the Living God.  And this is the answer most Christians will give when asked why they won’t watch these movies, because that stuff actual happens, needs to be taken seriously and is not an appropriate source of entertainment.  But not everyone who thinks of themselves as Christian refuses to see them.  In fact, those Christians who are willing to see them must be in the majority if one is to account for the incredible success of the three movies.  Why do they still go?  Probably a combination of minimal worry about content in any of their sources of entertainment and they’ve developed a liking for the kind of thrill that these movies offer.  And so one would think that the question at hand, when it comes whether or not it is OK to watch movies like Paranormal Activity, centers around the importance of the content in our sources of entertainment.  But it seems like Christians, on both sides of the argument, have already bought into the falsities perpetuated by the paranormal trilogy (which is also bound up with all of these ghost-hunter shows). 

To cut to the chase, these movies are teaching America to fear the paranormal, meaning demons.  And here is problem #1.  Already they are outside the biblical witness (the standard which the Church is required to hold the world to) by equating  “paranormal activity” with “demonic”.  Dictionary.com defines paranormal as “of or pertaining to the claimed occurrence of an event or perception without scientific explanation, as psychokinesis, extrasensory perception, or other purportedly supernatural phenomena”.  Notice the immediate discrepancy between the definition provided by the Paranormal movies and Dictionary.com.  The former has nothing more to say than “demonic” while the latter says, basically, “things beyond the explanation of modern science”.  But is the demonic the only thing existing beyond the reaches of modern science?  And it’s at this point that Christian’s on both sounds of the argument should be bothered. 

Problem #2: these movies, for all their emphasis on paranormal activity, have nothing to say about the paranormal activity that people across the world encounter hundreds of times more frequently than anything witnessed to in these movies; the movement of the Holy Spirit, the living presence of Jesus, the joy of the Father, in our worshipping together as the Church, in time spent in silence seeking personal communion with our Creator, in our loving of our children, in our taking the posture of servant towards our friends, families, and enemies, in our helping the helpless, and even in the appreciation of a purple-red-orange-melting together sunset.  And while it’s the life of the former three that gives significance to the latter activities, it remains true that we worship, know, and are known by a God who is all-powerful, all knowing and everywhere.  (If the reader is like every other Christian in the world who struggles to grasp the nature of those attributes of God, here is an explanation that approaches those attributes from a different angle.)  The only Christian influence, by the movie’s standards, is a Catholic nanny that knows how to do spells.  Some would point out that her being Catholic means she’s not Christian.  I would point out that her spell-casting means she’s not even Catholic.  And that’s it.  The movies are silent outside of this single pseudo-Catholic influence. 

At this point some might say we shouldn’t take things so seriously, to stop dissecting for theological error movies that were created solely for entertainment purposes.  This brings us to problem #3: the country is being taught to fear things that really aren’t worth fearing, while the things worth fearing are truly left in the dark.  Millions and millions have flocked to theatres to see these films over the years (including myself).  The only explanation for this (besides the movies being skillfully put together) is that the subject matter actually scares people.  And at first glance it would seem that the fear driving people to these theatres is healthy; it’s based on stuff that is sort of real.  And so we come back to the “sort of” from the first paragraph.  Not only do these movies define “paranormal activity” as “demonic”, but also equate “demonic” with “people getting flung across rooms”.  This is what’s truly unhealthy about these films: they take something the majority of people are afraid of and then build movies around a fantastic caricature of it while the truer evils of demonic forces are completely neglected. 

Yes, demons can probably throw you across a room.  Yes, they could probably lift your entire kitchen up to the ceiling and then drop it with timing so precise as to maximize your reaction.  But if every time a demon pumped thoughts through your mind to distort the image of your friend with the goal of destroying your relationship with them you instead got your feet pulled out from under you and landed on your back, you would be profoundly better off.  If every time you were led in your thinking to see women as objects to be consumed an invisible Chuck Liddell instead punched you in the chest, you might still know how to treat women as persons created in the image of the Triune God.  If every time you were home alone your lamps started blinking and swaying, or you got picked up by your hair, or kept getting locked in closets, instead of being led to believe that the only way to relieve your boredom was to go on Facebook or watch TV or look at pornography, then you might have annoying lights, a sore scalp, or need to become a locksmith, but at least you would know the importance of being alone and silent at the feet of your Redeemer, or to pray for the many sorrows you see in the lives of those around you, not to mention the catastrophic evil that fills our news stations, or to appreciate the irreducible beauty of the turning leaves on the tree outside your window.  If instead of institutions that systematically exploit the weak and powerless we had a bunch of men in suits that got picked up in their sleep, we might have some freaked out men in suits but thousands of Americans might still have their homes, little girls would not be enslaved by sex trafficking gangs, and children in Africa would not be abducted and forced to armies. 

The subject, or the exploitation of the subject, of these movies, offends many Christians.  It’s the position of the Pious and Profane that even said Christians have already been tricked by the father of lies.  He would have our fears directed toward little girls who act like tigers, inexplicable shadows on walls, and rearrangement of furniture, all the while we are being trained to see women as pleasures to be had, to interpret that comment we heard the other day as intended to hurt, to think that the world will be better off, that we can end sex trafficking, the corruption of wall street, and perverse international economic imbalance if only we can get “our guy” in the oval office.  The irony is that (to borrow from Pastor Sean Kappauf) the thing the world needs most, which she aches and groans for (Rom. 8:19-22), IS paranormal activity in its truest, most biblical sense.  She needs the movement of the Holy Spirit, the living (and therefore judging) presence of Jesus the Christ, according to the eternal plan of the Father.  And until the true King returns on a cloud of fire, hurling lightning bolts at evil forces, dropping grenades of power on our demonic systems, it is the job of the holy and catholic Church to usher in the Kingdom by the power of the Spirit.  God’s plan for the world is wildly paranormal, and it’s about time His Body reclaimed that word in His name.