What Horror Writers Teach Christians about Good and Evil.
H.P. Lovecraft and St. Augustine on evil
Here in New England, we have an association with three major horror writers:
Edgar Allan Poe born in Boston.
Stephen King the literary face of Maine.
Finally, Rhode Island’s Howard Philip (H.P.) Lovecraft. Two of his stories make for a good reflection.
Lovecraft’s stories take place all over Southern New England. In fact, the Dunwich Horror features family names that are towns along the route I-91 corridor north of Holyoke, Massachusetts.
Coincidentally, the events takes place around the same time as another New England based though non-horror story — Our Town by Thornton Wilder, which reflects on life and death more than good and evil. It takes place in Grover’s Corner, New Hampshire which is the actual town of Peterborough and only 37 miles east of the I-91 corridor.
Lovecraft was an atheist, but he also understood that if good can exist in our world, then evil can as well. The Case of Charles Dexter Ward and The Dunwich Horror both deal with the presence of evil and the dangers of not respecting its reality by foolishly crossing the boundary into it.
His writing reflects a pagan point of view of evil as a natural reality beyond us and outside our understanding. We need to accept this and leave it alone, he indicates.
Our Catholic faith teaches us more the source of good and evil, something that Lovecraft’s writing does not grasp. He understood their existence, but not their nature. That adds to the effectiveness of his writing because what makes evil more horrifying is knowing that it exists but not what it actually is. We, however, as Catholics need to understand its nature.
The source of all that is good is our creator. We know that St Augustine taught that evil is the privation of the good. This means that when we walk away from God who is the source of all what is good, we can only walk to where God is not. That is where evil thrives.
Jesus was a master in explaining good and evil in the terms of light and darkness. If God is the source of light and we walk away from God, we can only walk into darkness.
I love the NASA picture of Saturn because, according to NASA, despite being a planet so big — its year is twenty seven times longer than our own — the physics of light still apply. The far side of Saturn is as much in darkness as the far side of a baseball placed in front of a flashlight outside at night. It illustrates well Jesus' analogy..
Many of our communities both in and out of the church may understand the existence of evil, but not the source or reality of it. Some might not believe in it at all. H.P. Lovecraft, although an atheist, understood the existence of it but he saw it as natural force that one encountered crossing boundaries that should be respected and never transversed.
In fact, if there is one question one learns to ask after reading Lovecraft it is: “Should we walk down this path?” — when confronted with a direction that may reveal a need for discernment. His message was that we have the freedom to do anything we want, but in our freedom we best choose to avoid those things that just should not be done —the stated theme of “The Case of Charles Dexter Ward”.
This lesson, I believe, should be taught through reading at least one of his stories in middle or high school. The lesson in a practical manner may mean: “Yes, you may have the freedom to take drugs, but that does not mean that you should.” I believe, however, parents today would not tolerate horror as required reading. There is, however, precedent for this idea. Something Wicked This Way Comes by Ray Bradbury was once required reading in many school systems.
Building upon Lovecraft’s themes, we learn to express our freedom best when we only do that which leads us to the goodness of God.
Jesus teaches the why of that principle: Seeking true wisdom rooted in the divine is the way to the source of all that is good. We can only walk into a world of more and more good if we do.
Psalm 23 reflects this well when it says:
Though I walk in the midst of the valley of the shadow of death,
I have no fear of evil, for you are with me (Psalm 23)
Where are we? In the midst of the valley of the shadow of death. If we walk away from God, where do we go? Deeper into the valley of the shadow of death, where there obviously is no life and it must get more and more hostile to existence. How do we find life? By remaining on the path following Christ through the valley of death, no matter how difficult the route may be.
In the horror genre, the subject of Hell is endemic. The classic movie, Event Horizon, (Rated R) illustrates St. Augustine’s principle of evil (beware a spoiler may be coming). If we choose to leave the world of order, even in the interest of expediency and progress, we may actually enter into pure chaos — Hell. There is no order, there is no good, there is no light, or truth to be found if we walk away from the source of all those things: God. As the movie obliquely illustrates — if we choose to reject the existence of evil and look at reality just from a material perspective, we may walk right into Hell accidentally.
Jesus came to save us from the elements in our universe that are beyond our understanding. Without Jesus, we become subject to all in the universe that belongs to the realm of what rejects God. He came to lead us away from that disaster and into the holiness of the source of all that is good who is God in the Holy Trinity.
We testify to the existence of this truth and to the saving work of our Lord. He calls us to embrace Him so that we may lead those to whom we minister from the forces of chaos, darkness and the privation of good. We testify to Christ leading us through the valley of death to the fullness of life in God’s kingdom.
We cannot, however, find it on our own because the source of all that is good is not us, it is rather drawing us to Him. Just as the understanding of true north is not a part of us, we need an outside source — magnetism — to navigate well. If we choose to navigate only by our intuition we will be permanently lost. If we seek the source of all that is good without seeking it at its source, we will walk accidentally into that world of chaos because we are walking in the darkness of ignorance.
If we do not believe in evil at all, we are walking both blindly and in darkness and every move we make is at best a guess.
Legions comprehend the existence of evil, but to find the good we need to understand the nature of evil in light of the good and seek the latter while avoiding the former.
Presently, we are living in a country where people reject Christ and His Church in the interest of the fullness of human progress. Evil grows in this environment because people do not know how to respect its reality or the route to safety because they do not know its nature. This may be the cause of so much division in our country.
The stories of some horror writers are important. They warn of the reality of evil. Meanwhile, our role is to do all we can to lead others to seek the source of all that is good into the joy of the Holy Trinity.