The Christian message in ‘Red One’

Red One is this year’s family Christmas blockbuster in which Santa is “kidnapped” and must be rescued (by a tracker from the naughty list) if Christmas is to be saved. Expect all the usual moments of madcap comedy and butt-kicking action, but there is a lot more to this film than first meets the eye. 

A witch, in league with Santa’s brother, has kidnapped Santa and taken the “Naughty List”, with the intention of punishing the bad people as they deserve. The witch (like the devil) wants to trap people in their own sin, enslaving them so that they are no longer able to choose good.

“So much bad behaviour out there, everywhere you look, it’s like nothing matters,” observes one Elf.

“If nothing matters to them,” says Santa “it seems they need us now more than ever.  We know who they (on the naughty list) really are.  We know that somewhere inside every lost grown up is the kid they once were.  Our gift is that we can see that, even when they can’t.”

The witch begins by trapping the son of the tracker employed to rescue Santa.  In an act of self-sacrificial love, the tracker allows himself to be trapped by the witch in order to save his son.  Paradoxically, by doing such a good deed, he can no longer be held by the power of the “naughty list”.  Loving sacrifice wins the day, and people continue in freedom to choose “for” or “against” goodness. 

About a month ago an erstwhile friend from those dark days where I turned my back on God, contacted me threatening to expose my “unChristian” past after seeing some pro-God, pro-life tweets of mine.  It is fair to say that we are on different sides of both the culture war and the spiritual war in which it nests. 

The things she wished to expose I have written about, talked about and most importantly taken to confession. 

 “Thank God for forgiveness and the Church,” was my response, but the whole exchange wreaked of demons. What on earth would motivate someone to reach out after 15 years, with such threats, cloaked in a mask of virtue?

 “It burns them that you have found a route out of the furnace,” my spiritual director commented.

The route out was the only one possible. It was the same route taken by the prodigal son: humility before God. 

It’s always the same pattern when the sacred is erased and man hoisted as the solution to all of humanities problems.  Without God, we will not choose, but be forced to humble ourselves, before whatever man holds the power.  It might be political power, celebrity power, wealth power or the power that comes from secret knowledge. 

What begins with purportedly noble objectives cannot remain noble apart from God.  None of the aims of the French revolution, the communist revolution or indeed the fourth industrial revolution can nor could be realised without destruction and bloodshed.   

With God eradicated, this macro pattern emerges in our micro relations. We see the incoherence of this paradigm all around us – those who present themselves (not God) as adjudicators of morality, inevitably resort to immoral aims to sustain their position as God; male feminists threatening to rape pro-life women; anti-racist campaigners using racial slurs against those who disagree; trans rights advocates making death threats against JK Rowling; environmentalists destroying sacred art and restricting freedom; wealthy billionaires imposing heavy burdens on ordinary people to achieve some as yet unrealised dream.  As with abortion (a demonic parody of the eucharist) God’s “This is my Body given for you” becomes Man’s “This is your body given for me”.

My “Sin” needed to be exposed because I was deemed to hold the wrong thoughts, the wrong views, the wrong ideas – not (it must be said) according to God, but according to the ultimate authority of my accuser’s personal judgement.  

It is not just difficult to love, to forgive, to be merciful and just without God, but impossible.  We can see the failed efforts of our attempts to realise equality thorough inequality, tolerance through intolerance and inclusivity by excluding the wrong people. 

In “Jesus of Nazareth”, Pope Benedict XVI tells us that “the choice of Jesus versus Barabbas is not accidental, two messiah figures, two forms of messianic belief stand in opposition. The choice is between a messiah who leads an armed struggle, promises freedom and a kingdom of one’s own and this mysterious Jesus who proclaims that losing oneself is the way to life. Is it any wonder”, he asks, “that the crowds preferred Barabbas?”

Barabbas takes many guises but is always with us, he is who we inevitably worship whenever we reject Christ.  Judas chose Barabbas over Jesus when he said, “Why wasn’t this perfume sold and the money given to the poor?”

We are fallen creatures, with the exception of Mary ‘Our tainted natures solitary boast’, mourning and weeping in this valley of tears.  Only God can see that brokenness and love us enough that he “gave his only son so that whoever believes in Him” (not Jordan Peterson, Donald Trump, Barack Obama, Maximillian Robespierre, Mary Woolstonecraft, Klaus Schwab, Josef Stalin, Adolf Hitler or any other human Barabbas) “shall not perish, but have eternal life”.

Christ shows us a different paradigm; one where self-sacrifice not grasping, obedience of the will, not coercion of the will, truly sets us free. 

“We know that somewhere inside every lost grown up is the kid they once were.  Our gift is that we can see that, even when they can’t,” says Santa in Red One.

Only Christ can see us as we truly are, love us despite it, and offer us eternal life. What choice will we make this Christmas? Will we choose Him, or will we make the mistake of calling once again for ‘Barabbas’? 

The post The Christian message in ‘Red One’ first appeared on Catholic Herald.

The post The Christian message in ‘Red One’ appeared first on Catholic Herald.