Trick, or Treat, or Both?

So I'm working up my blogger endurance to where I can post a little more frequently. A couple things are preventative here. One is clearly my perfectionism. I can't put mediocre work out there for everyone. (I know what you're thinking. "This is the good stuff?!") Yeah, yeah. The other is just straight-up busyness. I don't know how the more proficient bloggers do it.

So my wife and I rented the recently released stop-motion animation movie, Coraline. A solid addition to the I-think-these-people-tried-to-make-a-kids'-movie-but-totally-failed genre. Or maybe they didn't intend it for kids. But the PG rating and the animation sure throws me off. It's got some pretty intense scenes. The thing I love about fantasy-tinged movies is that they can bend and break rules more realistic movies must abide by. Hard to pull off metamorphizing tricks like you see in fantasy movies without going the unfortunate way of the Transformers blights. If you're going to turn a chidren's book or toy into a movie, trying to make it as realistic as possible defeats the purpose. Can't wait for this, by the way! But I digress...

Without revealing plot spoilers, I'll offer what I took away from the movie. It attempts to make the point that maintaining the mentality of a child is a risk-reward endeavor. It's Coraline's adventurousness that both gives her life meaning and also leads her astray into the throes of darkness. The antagonist of the movie lures her into immense danger by way of wonderful treats, great food, luscious desserts, wondrous circus and theatrical shows, and a beautiful garden that from the aerial view looks just like Coraline. As Coraline begins to realize the evil intent behind these things, the appearance of everything in this begins to fade. Rather than appearing to be very lush, everything begins to actually look dead and decayed.

There's some reality to this. If you think about it, this is sort of the way evil works. I mean, there's the obvious Garden of Eden example. It continues to work this way today. How often does what begins as sweet romance end up in terrible tragedy, a conduit of human brokenness that results in immense pain or even death? Or the hundreds and thousands of kids that get sucked into gang life or organized crime through the edifice of "friends and family." Let's not forget the operations of Al-Qaeda, which covers its despicable actions with the "religious inspiration" card.

Yet, as one of the more affecting songs I've ever heard reminds me, I would be robbing myself of vital self-awareness to stop at pointing at far off examples of evil covered over by beauty or virtue. I do this myself all the stupid time. Almost everything "good" that I do for others is shrouded with selfish intent. Self-aggrandizement. Self-advancement. Self-assurance. All of the above. It all starts innocently, of course. Because that's how evil presents itself to us.

The question is, when we start to realize it's evil, what do we do? When the pretty face begins to fade, and we can acknowledge that something we are doing or about to do is rooted in evil intentions, do we go through with it? Or do we go running as fast as we can back to reality, back to goodness, back to righteousness? This means running as fast as we can back to the cross on which Jesus died. There is nothing more real, more apparent to a stupid man's eyes, than a perfect God paying off his own wrath that was due to sinful man. That reality is so ridiculous it can't be a trick.