A Defense of Enjoying Scary Things

Some people would say it's wrong to enjoy horror or a good scare.  I'm not talking about people who merely don't like the horror genre, who don't understand it or who find it too scary.  I mean that there are people who take a matter of taste and turn it into a matter of principle.  These are the sort who take it upon themselves as a kind of duty to instruct their fellow Christians as to the immorality of enjoying scary stories, films, or activities, and claim a moral high ground on the basis that their interests are more "godly" than the dark, demented, "twisted" interests of those who would dare to enjoy something scary.  They might even go so far as to instill, deliberately, a disdain for horror in anyone (say, a new Christian initiate or godchild) whose religious education is their duty.  Keep in mind, this disdain for horror is generally applied to even those examples of the genre that match up to the guidelines in my last post.  Just because it's scary, evidently, is reason enough to condemn it.

Now, despite the fact that I can't help but get annoyed with this attitude, I want to admit that I see where these folks are coming from, and there are probably even a few people I like and admire who have this attitude.  We Christians, the scriptures say, are to focus on "whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable" and "anything [that] is excellent or praiseworthy."  Also, "what fellowship has darkness with light?"  So it would seem, to many, that such verses preclude an enjoyment of horror or scary things.  I get it; I really do.  And although I disagree, I can respect those who come to this conclusion, despite my personal annoyance at it.

However, I would first argue that if we take these admonitions to mean that it's wrong to enjoy he horror genre, it would also be wrong to enjoy any cathartic entertainment that was anything but happy and saccharine.  Horror is not the only thing, if one is being fair, that could be called "dark."  Sorrow is dark.  So much for enjoying a tragedy.  What could be darker than war?  War films, too, must be eschewed then.  Sin is the ultimate darkness, and so any story in which characters sin is out; no matter if the moral of the story itself is sound, and merely the characters sinful, because such considerations--in the minds of such people as morally oppose horror--would NOT redeem a horror story, after all.  In not condemning these other things, nor holding them to the same strict "You should only ever think of nice things!" standard, opponents of horror show that their opposition is fueled by more than a little bit of their own personal taste.  "I find horror unpleasant and dark, so surely God must too."

I'm sure that's in the Bible somewhere...
Or maybe in a Church document?

But horror, for all its detractors, is just one more variation on what all storytelling is about:  Conflict and resolution.  The chief difference between a well-made (key phrase:  "well-made") horror film and, say, a crime drama is that in the horror the villain and conflict happen to strike a "creepy" nerve, whereas in the crime drama the more mundane villain and conflict do not do so on so primal a level.  In some cases this is literally a matter of circumstance:  That we are more viscerally spooked by a misshapen monster with claws and sharp teeth than we are by a suave crime lord with a gun has no bearing on whether or not it is immoral to watch a movie where the villain is a former but okay to watch one where the villain is the latter.  So the horror genre, in and of itself, is not materially different from any other genre--although to be sure the execution of a particular story, just as in any genre, may be in violation of sound Christian principles, but we're speaking of the inherent idea of horror here--and only differs in the particular presentation and choice of villain, conflict or setting.

In the most blatant cases where there is a double standard, stories that the horror haters may accept even have scenes or passages straight out of the horror genre.  Why is it okay to watch Frodo, from Lord of the Rings, battle for his life with the horrific eight-legged monstrosity that is Shelob, but it's immoral to watch a film whose entire plot is about a giant spider?  Let's assume that the protagonist of the latter film even survives and conquers the beast, so that it can't be argued that the latter film presents a more pessimistic or cynical worldview.  Is it really different just because the Shelob plot is a subplot and not the entire story?  Would it be, then, immoral to--for whatever reason--pop into the room just as Frodo was fleeing Shelob, but to leave the room as the battle was over?  I think most people would know how ridiculous it is to assert that the Shelob sequence is suddenly immoral if isolated, where it was just fine otherwise, yet that's precisely what is suggested when we say that it's okay to enjoy stories with scary elements, but not to enjoy scary stories.  

In fact, there are a number of merits to the horror genre.  So not only is horror in itself neutral, there can be arguments made that it has real value, at least--as with anything else--if enjoyed with the proper mindset.

First of all, an enjoyment of horror and scary things stems from the same fascination that drives us to fully appreciate God's creation.  I think we sometimes like to forget that the same God who made puppies and flowery meadows also  made hairy spiders and terrifyingly dark caves.   Are we to say that these latter things are bad?  Did God make a mistake?!  Of course not!  Then why might we condemn the person who, for Halloween, dresses up as a spider, yet embrace the one who dresses up as a historical figure?  God made both the spider and the man!  Or why condemn the man who dresses up as a fictional monster, but not the one who dresses up as an elf?  God endowed man with the creativity to dream up both creatures, the former reflecting the Divine Creativity that made the scary spider, the latter reflecting that very same Creativity which also made the graceful swan.  Is a man who appreciates the former morbid, yet the man who appreciates the latter healthy?  Did God, Who hates nothing He has made according to scripture, wish for only some of His creations, and only the creations of man which reflect those, to be appreciated by us, while the others should be hated?  I think not!

Swan!  That is all.

Second of all, many horror stories illustrate the battle between good and evil in more direct terms than a great many other genres.  So many genres portray the forces of good and bad in shades of gray, as is only natural when working with mundane subject matter.  Horror is right up there, however, with fantasy in being prone to drawing clear lines between light and darkness, good and evil.  The villain is often enough a soulless killer or a monster, representing (if only on a subconscious level) the cosmic battle between humanity and our horrific true enemy, Satan.  In the ultimate battle we fight, there is no ambiguity, no shades of gray.  We face a dragon, a beast, a creature more horrific than anything a horror writer or director could dream up.  Scripture often paints that battle starkly, without ambiguity.  Most other genres that are supposedly "okay," such as drama, comedy, or whatever else, tend by nature to blur those lines, understandably so because they deal in mundane mortal life, in "flesh and blood", and as we know, the enemies against whom we fight are not flesh and blood.  On the other hand, horror, alongside fantasy and sometimes science fiction, has the unique tendency of outlandish plots that go beyond "flesh and blood," where often enough even human villains are essentially "monsters in human form," an embodiment of unambiguous evil.  Humanity needs such stories.  This is why the old fairy tales and morality tales are often enough horror stories in their own right (somehow being "grandfathered" in so that horror haters consider them acceptable).   For this same reason, when interpreted through a Christian lens, horror stories can make particularly good allegories for the inner battles Christians face.

Third, horror offers a catharsis that no other genre does.  It is in our very being, biologically, to need an outlet for our fight or flight tendencies.  Long ago, life was largely a horror story.  Humanity was surrounded on all fronts by a mysterious and terrifying wilderness, full of creatures and threats that were unknown to us.  The feeling that we get when we watch, read, or see something scary is a feeling that our distant ancestors would have known just by their existence, an existence where fear of the unknown "monsters" waiting out there in the darkness was very practical.  And in many ways, we still have reason to entertain such fears, we just have a way, in modern society, of covering it up with a veneer of technology and complex civilization.  But our nature remains unchanged.  There are those who would like to live their lives ignoring this "scary" side of reality, but I don't think it's healthy.  In ancient times, people deliberately told scary stories to prepare each other for the genuine horrors of life, to keep each other "on their toes" via the cathartic effect those stories had.  Such stories and works serve the same purpose today.

Fourth, horror offers a continuity with our ancestors, both recent and ancient, that we lack if we smugly insist that scary tales have no place in our lives.  Just listen to the stories told by our medieval and ancient ancestors.  Many of them, if we weren't so familiar with them, would make our hair stand on end!  Just look at the artwork in some of our ancient places of worship.  Statues of gargoyles, demons, and ghouls were meant to remind people of the darkness that exists.  How ludicrous it would be if, back then, our deeply religious forbears would include such imagery in their most sacred spaces,  yet we "enlightened" ones should turn up the nose at such imagery or descriptions in our fiction or in our spookier celebrations, let alone in our parishes--oh the horror!  What a loss of continuity, a break with tradition, if we are too faint of heart to handle scary things when those who came before were willing to give such things a prominence even in churches!  Are we, with our whitewashed aversion to whatever reminds us of mortality and the existence of evil, better than they?  I can't buy into the notion that we are.

We don't make things like this now that our society is more
Christian than it was a couple hundred years ago...  Oh wait...

I'm not saying, by any stretch of the imagination, that everyone should be a fan of horror.  And I'll be the first to admit that a lot of particular entries in the horror genre these days are trash.  But that's a matter of circumstance, not inevitability.  And in fact we only further this unfortunate circumstance if we, the people with the right values, snub this time-honored genre while only those in the secular, cynical culture around us are willing to take it on.  If you do not personally enjoy the horror genre, my aim here is not to "convert" you.  People enjoy what they enjoy.  I'm also in agreement that anyone who was obsessed with horror, to the point of neglecting the "lighter" things, the pleasant things, would be morbid.  I'm not here to defend a consuming obsession.  Rather, I seek only to point out the deep error of condemning the genre, and the enjoyment of it, as being incompatible with Christian virtue.  Historically and logically, that's just not true, and the attitude is more a product of a modern, sanitized culture which desperately denies mortality and the existence of danger or evil--perhaps with a hint of Puritan influence--than of historic Christian morality, which has long made room for the horrific and the frightening right alongside its focus on the lofty and the beautiful.  It's simply not "either/or" here.  It never has been.

Judgmentalism: More Secular Than You Think

We Christians are often accused of being judgmental.  "You people think everything is a sin," the secularists and modernists say.  Now, for one thing, I would question someone's creativity if the majority or entirety of everything fun or good they can think of falls under the banner of what we Christians would call sin.  It seems to me that if you must dip into sin to have a full life, you're doing something wrong.  Because the reality is that the number of things the Church and scriptures teach to be sinful is dwarfed by the number of things that are beautiful, good, and desirable.

But that's beside the point.

Get it?

I would argue that defining and identifying sin has nothing to do with being judgmental in the way that the word is usually used.  Usually when someone makes that accusation, they believe that we are judging people.  In fact, only God can do that, and Christians have taught that for centuries.  What we can do is judge actions, and point out that these actions lead to material and spiritual doom if left unchecked and not repented.  But actually, we are called specifically to not judge the sinner himself.  We are supposed to forgive.  That doesn't mean that, in certain cases, there are not consequences for sin, but it means that we do not hate nor loathe the sinner--not least of all because we are sinners too, and have no right!  If a Christian ever says of anyone, "He's a monster for what he has done!  He's disgusting!" then he is out of line, because all sin is a horrible offense against God, so we may as well be looking in the mirror and seeing a monster too; and if we do, then we've no right to turn up the nose at that "other" monster, if that's how we're so determined to define another human being; which we shouldn't in the first place.

Even so, the secularists and modernists paint a picture of Christians as looking down on everyone who sins.  They claim to be more enlightened, more merciful.  The basis of this is that they, or so they say, are not so quick to judge actions as wrong.  If you feel that something is right for you, whether it's getting drunk on weekends, or having sex with whomever you want, divorcing the spouse to whom you vowed yourself for better or worse because you "just don't get along anymore," or whatever else, the modern "enlightened" world tells you "You do what you have to do to be happy.  No one can say it's wrong."  And from this, they say they are more forgiving than we terrible, bigoted Christians.

There's an obvious flaw with this logic.  How can you "forgive" something that you haven't even judged as wrong?!  If I don't even think the man and woman who have a premarital fling are sinning, how can I forgive them?  You don't forgive someone for doing something that's morally permitted in the first place; you can only forgive them precisely because there is something wrong to forgive.

The truth is, when it comes to someone who does something they do think is wrong, the modern world is more cold and unforgiving than a Puritan in Salem.  Think about it.  The biggest things that our open-minded society still condemns are those things which "infringe on someone else" in some way, especially those things that both infringe on someone else and are illegal.  And once you cross those lines, our society turns its back on you just as quickly as the leaders of one of those cult compounds surrounded by walls and barbed wire fences.  You are labeled a monster; the media openly remarks on how disgusting you are; the internet is aflame with calls for your death, preferably not before you've first been tortured in ways that would make crucifixion look tame.

Unless  you happen to be a filthy criminal offender.
Then we'd rather you "NOT EXIST".  Sorry 'bout that.

But the worst thing is this:  We Christians are often affected by it.  We buy into it too.  I've been guilty of it myself.  Think:  You can probably think of at least one crime, probably several, that makes you think of the perpetrator as vile, as a monster.  There's probably some wrong deed that immediately pops to your mind as you read this, that makes you think "Well I know that I and my loved ones are better than that!"  It's as though we need someone to look down on.  In the modern world, where we are progressively more understanding and compassionate toward sinners, which is a good thing as long as we still recognize the sin as sin, we still reserve a certain place in the darkest spots of our minds for those other sinners.  They are the sinners that we gauge as being in a totally different category from most.

In the most extreme cases of our judgmental attitude, and that of the secular world as well, we will judge sinners as monsters whose motives or intentions are not even all that different from ours, but just happen to be oriented toward a sin with greater consequences and more tragic effects.  There are sinners in prisons--and some rightfully so (to send some people to prison can be necessary to protect society, and is not inherently judgmental if it isn't coupled with disgust and hatred)--who never desired to harm anyone, whose deeds did not even arise from cruel intent or a lack of empathy, but who were simply addicted to certain sins, just like any of us; but the sins to which they have the distinct misfortune of being addicted happen to hurt people in more obvious ways than ours do.

Instead of realizing that we were simply blessed that our own temptations and struggles happen to have less obviously dire consequences, we fill ourselves with pride:  We are not merely blessed; we are better people than those terrible, vile criminals.  We would never do that.  Never mind the fact, of course, that often we don't have the faintest notion of what it's like to be tempted to do "that."  And strangely, insanely, we think that our not being tempted gives us even more of a right to look down on those who are!  As if our not being tempted is something we accomplished, and not a gift from God, "lest any man could boast!"  How prideful, how arrogant, can we be?

And what about those sinners, even, who have had harsh or cold intentions, but who have since repented?  Can any of us say we have never had cruel or spiteful motives?  Most of us, if we are honest, have probably entertained thoughts we would be horrified to have made public knowledge, in moments of anger.  Ironically, we ourselves often lack empathy toward those who commit crimes we consider especially heinous, and some of us entertain, with sadistic passion, fantasies of them "getting their just desserts."  Would we wish to be forever "branded" by those moments?  We serve a God Who once said that to sin in the heart is to have truly committed the sin (although surely to do it in actuality would be to repeat it, so that doesn't mean we "might as well do it"), so we too are guilty.  Should we not show the mercy toward even "those" sinners, as we desire mercy?

How much grace we could share with the world if we lived up to a higher standard than that of the world!  What if we Christians were truly radically forgiving, loving sinners that even the world, with all its notions of "tolerance" and "open mindedness," rejects and demonizes?  What if we could visit the "worst" sinners in prison and, although we were wise enough to protect ourselves from those clearly not yet freed from their harmful vices, we would not nurture disgust for them, but rather pity and empathy, the recognition that "If only my temptations had been different, that might have been me?"  If we did that, then perhaps we would do what the earliest Christians did:  Attract souls from the truly most marginalized and rejected members of society whom no one in the world of unbelievers was willing to love.