Thursday, May 1, 2014

A Critique of the Overall Message of THE DARK TOWER *SPOILER ALERT*

I finished the DARK TOWER series yesterday. It was 4,000+ pages of one continuous story, ostensibly covering 7 books but really containing one long book. It was a wonderfully told story, though gruesome at times. I enjoyed so much of it, but the end my friends really bothered me. And in that ending so much of what was before was turned on its head.

The author warns his readers that they should not really go beyond a certain point. He chides those who read the series worrying about what the Tower was and what it contained, and insisted that the real point of reading should've been the journey there, all along. But this is extraordinarily disingenuous. As if any adventure can be undertaken without any concern for how it might end. Of course that it might end badly is inherent in it BEING an adventure. But being indifferent to how an adventure will end is ridiculous. It cannot be done and should not be done.

The overall message of the book was that the ultimate goal of the cosmic quest for Truth with a capital T, should take a back seat to the individual adventures, the individual relationships, that make up this quest. The entire book series was really a commentary on the Abraham and Isaac story, whether consciously or unconsciously. The hero Roland has serious character flaws, and he didn't seem to grow as much as he should have as a person throughout the series. But the end result of his quest is a negative judgment upon all he did. Roland meets the god he sought. But the God he seeks ended up being justice without love. Reinhold Niebuhr said a God that was just but not merciful winds up being neither. The ending bothered me because it seemed to me to be a pretense of justice, since there was no love.

The final word was in now way hopeless. Roland is offered a second chance (and, we presume, many others) to leave the road he walks, the road seeking understanding of the Ultimate, and to instead choose the simple joys of human love. Faith is certainly not derided, but a mystical faith really is. King comes off as a humanist, exalting human love first and foremost. It is not that King doesn't believe in God (he does), but again that God seems to be justice and not love. And it is in love that we find our meaning.

The problem is that Roland seems, by all accounts, CALLED to what he is doing. The Tower invites him in, calls to him, draws him. For what? To count all the sins he commits seeking the highest against him?

This seems to me to bring up a rather interesting theological point. We are called by God, indeed we discover God, by opening ourselves up to the deepest of relationships with others. God provides this well of love and vulnerability that creates these powerful connections with so many people. Yet we know we can, in a moment, be called to turn away from these relationships. I certainly don't think that we are called to do what Abraham did, nor what Roland does in the books. But Roland' dilemma, complicated by the fact that to accomplish his goal of seeing his god he must also save the universe and the violence that quest pulls him into, is a dramatization of our own. I can be called away to mission, I spend time and money on people who are not one of those constituting relationships that makes up my very self, and my life when I look back on it will be filled with many small (and maybe a few large) sacrifices made on behalf of faceless strangers and over against those I love most.

Of course those sacrifices are not really for those strangers, they are for the God who calls me to a life that seeks to treat all in love and as revelations of God. I find that I can only love the many when I love God first. I put everything I am into the individual connections of my life, into my friends and family. I love them so deeply (thank you God for this), and I try so hard to make them all happy, to serve them and it is only through my commitment to God first that I find this possible. God calls me to love the many, but only second to my love and commitment to the One. And if God calls me to a life that costs those I love most, should I not respond?

Again, this isn't about letting those I love die, as Roland does. The commitment to life is first, and the Bible makes that clear. Roland never learned this lesson, and again, the Tower gives him repeated chances to learn it, but it does this within the context of an overall call to him to walk away from the many and to the one. That Roland, a born gunslinger, would interpret this call the way he does is not surprising.

Is there a fraud in the universe, is there no way to serve the One while still loving the many? Can I not seek the Highest, the very face of God, as my first priority without killing what I love? No Christian can look to the Cross and not ask these questions. Bonhoeffer is right when he says, "whenever God calls us, He bids us come and die." Our death has costs for those God has called us to love. The life of self-sacrifice cannot be lived without other-sacrifice.

Only in the shadow of the cross and the light of the resurrection can this paradox be resolved. Only if the God I serve is Love, can my commitment to Oneness with Him not rob me of the attachments, the deep attachments He himself calls me to. For my service to God does not thereby negate my love, but enhances it, fulfills it. The love of the one who Loves God first becomes redemptive. It draws those it touches to Him, and thus to Heaven. The promise is that God loves all and each and every in a way I cannot. My love for the particular, the Christian believes, would be poison otherwise. If my service God causes those I love to participate in eternity, if heaven is brought to Earth by Christian love, if Christ becomes alive in my loving, but only through my fidelity to Him, then my service to God IS service to those I love. I do for them even when I may have to leave them for other shores, for a while. If God is love, if the Gospels are true, then there is no tension between love of God and love of neighbor. Just as I discover God in my love of others, I serve others by serving God.

Of course this only follows IF God is love. If not, then like Roland, our deepest desire for the the highest and the deepest, the mystical and religious quest is a failure, and we miss out on the human love that can at least bring some comfort in the world. We sacrifice many moments with those we hold dearest to put time and effort and mind towards God.  But really, is this love of any value or meaning without the other? Can such love be anything other than an idol, that invites us in but ultimately lets us down. One way or another, we all have to leave it all behind. If void is what embraces us, can human love redeem at all.

King seems to think that love redeems, but not God's love. It doesn't seem there to be had. Not really. He had a chance to say something truly profound about the Universe, to affirm something we cannot really know, but is the only real grounds for hope. For if we are supposed to be led one way by God and another by love, then how can we be held responsible for our actions? If God is not love we'd be required to worship love rather than God. But if God is not love and only love redeems, then how could we ever KNOW this? King leaves his readers with only the shadow of hope. But it is all on us. Only we can figure our way out of the trick. Only we can solve the riddle, according to him. There is no hope I have that we are capable of such a thing. I know I'm not. I can only do the best I can and throw myself on the mercy of God. If there is no mercy there, then we're screwed. But I don't believe that. I can't prove it, but it is the center of my faith.

Putting God first while loving as we are pulled by love is an act of faith. It is giving those we love to the care of God, and letting go of control. It is trusting that the God we serve and give them over to loves and is merciful. It is a statement of the Gospels, the only real hope anyone has.

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