Cormac McCarthy and Stephen King write about violence and horror. In fact, one of McCarthy's books is so graphic that many can't read it. So, how can they be the bearers of the Good News--the Evangel--that God has come to man (bringing true liberty), not that man is working his way to God (a never-ending burdensome journey)?
As I learn more and more about science and history, my belief that: a)there is a God; and b)that He is accurately reflected in His son, Jesus Christ, becomes more and more rational. However, my friend, Paul Zahl, keeps reminding me that we come to God through the irrational, not the rational. Only when we come to God, can we then see that science and history support our belief in God. As McCarthy demonstrates so powerfully in The Sunset Limited, no amount of rational discourse will bring someone to faith. This explains why McCarthy uses violence and King uses horror--they are both trying to access our irrational impulses, not our rational minds.
As we were watching The Sunset Limited last nite, my wife gasped when Jackson was telling his story of a jailhouse assault. It was graphic. The Road is graphic, No Country is graphic, and Blood Meridian is the most graphic of all. These books make us wince. They offend our sensibilities. Yet, they reach our irrational, they prepare us to receive the message that Jackson so eloquently states in The Sunset Limited, for the light in The Road and No Country, and, well, as to Blood Meridian, I'm not clever enough to figure it out. To me, McCarthy is a much better evangelist than most any authors who claim to be Christian authors.
The same is true for King. In the Green Mile, the horror of the murder of two young girls, the horror of death row, prepare us for the miraculous healing wrought by John Coffey (note his initials). In Desperation, person after person is brutally murdered by the devil-inhabited Sheriff, preparing us for Johnny's conversion to Christ and his sacrifice to save the others. The Stand begins with the extermination of most people in the U.S. through a virus designed for biological warfare which sets the stage for a marvelous tale of the struggle between good and evil and of a God who intervenes, who remembers His people. Interestingly, King's daughter is a universalist minister. As I become more and more aware of my sinful nature, I desire more and more for God to save everyone. It could be that Jesus was a universalist--not in the sense that there a multiple pathways to God--but in the sense that through Christ, God is setting the entire world right.
As a minister friend of mine said after reading King's "11/22/63:" "we'll see him in heaven."
