Redeeming Hermes

Hermes is the Greek god of both commerce and threshold – of movement from A to B. The Hymn to Hermes was written (around 420 BC) as Greece moved from an economy marked by the exchange of agrarian goods between kin to one that encompassed commerce between strangers for profit.

From Hermes we also get the word “hermeneutics”* – the art and science of interpretation. So when one missionary writes, “the church is the hermeneutic of the Gospel”, he means that the church is to interpret the Gospel to the world. Literally, the church is to embody the Gospel as it moves into the world and, by doing so, the church is to invite the world to move into the Gospel.

At the threshold of the City what words will we use to communicate that life cannot be reduced to commerce between strangers for profit? Life comes to those who welcome strangers out of love [Matthew 25:31-46]. And it comes because of this same Gospel: ‘that Christ died for our sins in accordance with the Scriptures, that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day in accordance with the Scriptures’ [from 1 Corinthians 15:3-4].

* Or, at least, Socrates does in Plato’s Cratylus.

The Complex Christ

Kester Brewin, The Complex Christ: Signs of Emergence in the Urban Church (London: SPCK, 2004), viii + 184

In this influential text, Kester Brewin argues that the urban church be allowed to emerge in the city just as the city itself emerged from what went before. This begins by grieving the ecclesiastical top-down hierarchies of yesteryear. He is often worth quoting at length.

‘Becoming incarnate will mean the same for us as it did for Christ. We will have to experience being small and defenceless, requiring nurture from our host-world just as Christ needed Mary’s milk. We cannot and must not remain rootless people or rootless churches. Christ needed water from the earth, food from the ground, education from his elders; yet we too often experience church as an organization that has absolutely no need for its surrounding community or area. It is too often an appendage, something slightly apart and independent, not needing the neighbouring culture in order to survive. To admit our need as a church, our dependence on a host culture is a risk. Yet like Christ we must take this risk of interdependence, this risk of being born, this risk of life.
We must be born again. We must re-emerge into the city space as infants. We must stop, wait, imagine, remember. Become wombs of the divine and undergo re-incarnation in the city. And Christ’s experience tells us that if we are going to minister to the city, to speak to it in a language that will understand, to represent God without distortion, then we will have to understand thoroughly how the city works. For it is only once we understand how our host culture works from the inside that we will even begin to understand what an emerging church dedicated to serving that urban host culture might look like’ [52].

‘Somewhere between these two poles of anarchy and rigidity – a spectrum with death at each end – there exists a place where a system begins to live, to self-organize, to become more than the sum of its parts, to develop a character, a culture, a soul if you will – as if some breath has entered it and commanded it to live’ [60].

‘Regardless of the discipline we look at, the same truth rings out: “life” springs up in the complex region between rigidity and disorder’ [60].

‘God will not come any more, will no longer be lured into our stone traps. And yet against this huge force of evolutionary movement, the bulk of the urban Church stands rigidly still under the precarious arrangements of stones. If we cannot adapt, the pressures of them will crush us too and form our fossilized homes, leaving us to museums and history books.
Living in the emerging, complex, bottom-up city, we attend churches that are hugely top-down, mechanistic, obsessed with hierarchy and authority. Often wrapped in the guise of “accountability”, our leaders enforce dictatorial structures ensuring that every sign of life is routed through them, that nothing is given the go-ahead without their “blessing” – and the need for blessing from on high usually acts as the curse of death on innovative, creative, and cutting-edge ideas. Inspired fledglings have their wings clipped as they are forced to justify their ideas and come up with completely “sorted” plans that fit in with a monochrome vision.
We should not ask this of our children. The newly emerged, the newborn, must be allowed to make mistakes, to risk, to dribble and scribble. In a church that admits it is “not holding, winning or discipling young people”, there needs to be a radical reassessment of how we treat our young, a move to “release and support young people who are leaders among their peers”. Christ could not begin his ministry immediately he was born, and neither should we expect every sprouting of new growth to be fully formed and fully able to defend itself. So much of the church still demands immediate results from every new initiative and idea – still demands a revolution.
“Listen”, God says, “I am doing a new thing. Do you not perceive it?” Complexity theory warns us we must listen because old-order top-down systems cannot survive in an emerging, evolving world. There will be no more revolution, only evolution. As the New York Times proclaimed, this is “not just a fascinating quirk of science: it’s the future”.
Yet if science warns us that a rigid, top-down church will not survive in an emergent world, it is also clear that a totally deregulated, anarchic church will do no better. Without any checks or balances it will disperse into obscurity, having no mechanisms for feedback and therefore no way of learning and evolving. So if the Church is to survive in the modern urban environment it must learn to to find new peaks out of the valleys by re-emerging as a complex, self-organizing system. It must be born again at the edge of chaos, just as the rigid, Old Testament God was. It must become embryonic and re-evolve within a host culture, learning from it, feeding from it and growing to understand it from the inside out. We must reestablish ourselves as the body of Christ, not the machine of Christ. Bodies are organic, dynamic, sentient, and conscious. They have hearts. Machines break down, while bodies evolve. This metaphorical re-centring from machine to body will require us to rethink our language too, away from the industrial vocabulary of “structure”, “drive”, “mechanism”, “steering”, towards more body-centred language: “nourish”, “grow”, “nurture”, “cultivate” and “adapt”.
There are still those who cry for revolution, for a revival that will change things in a snap, make everything OK as thousands flock to church … But the days of revolution are over. The cry for revival is too often a cry of abdication: you do it all, God. Well, God has done God’s bit – it is the systems that now need to change. This is the faith we have signed up for: the church as the body of Christ where we have real parts to play, real responsibilities’ [62-63].

‘Life exists on the edge of chaos’ [69].

‘There are … two possible modes of change: revolution or evolution. Revolution is characterized by speed and violence. It is about divide and rule. It tries to impose change from without. It is top-down and heavily dependent on hierarchies and centralized power. Evolution refuses to rush ahead and thus avoids shearing and fissures. It tries to bring about change from within. It is about empowerment. It is bottom up and dependent on distributed knowledge.
In Christ’s coming to earth, we see God finally critiquing revolution as ineffective. The top-down system of the law, the temple and the priests – all of which Paul tells us end up condemning us without changing us – are superseded in this new covenant, which promises to change us from within. In Christ, we see God modelling a bottom-up emergent system that can transform us in this new way, and calling us onto this path of spiritual evolution as we seek higher places’ [153-154].

‘This then is the complex Christ: it is Christ disestablishing the need for the temple, for people to gain access to God only by being in one place and through hierarchies of priests; it is Christ establishing his body as a decentralized network of believers, and thus giving birth to a complex, emergent church that could not be destroyed any more easily than the Internet could be’ [163].

The Smartest Guys in the Room

Bethany McLean and Peter Elkind, The Smartest Guys in the Room: The Amazing Rise and Scandalous Fall of Enron (London: Penguin, 2004), xxiv + 440 pp.

Some thoughts, quotes, and summaries are laid out below. In light of Stephen Green’s comments in Good Value on the neglect of relationships in business, it is telling to see relational dysfunction threaded throughout.

‘Rarely has there ever been such a chasm between corporate illusion and reality’ [xx].

‘The tale of Enron is a story of human weakness, of hubris and greed and rampant self-delusion; of ambition run amok; of a grand experiment in the deregulated world; of a business model that didn't work; and of smart people who believed their next gamble would cover their last disaster – and who couldn't admit they were wrong’ [xxi].

“We were changing the world. We were doing God’s mission” [xxi].

‘For all his brilliance, Skilling had dangerous blind spots. His management skills were appalling, in large part because he didn’t really understand people. He expected people to behave according to the imperatives of pure intellectual logic, but of course nobody does that (including, it should be said, Skilling himself.) One former top executive recalls arguing with him constantly, struggling to explain, “Jeff, people will do things just because they’re people”’ [28].

Enron’s derivatives ‘revolved around the idea that natural gas could be reduced to its financial terms.’ This is ‘not about speculation, at least at first’ [37].

Skilling hired people regardless of relational ability [55-56].

Skilling’s marriage suffered [68].

‘Skilling loved to say that in trying to create a new kind of energy company, Enron “was doing the Lord’s work”’ [71].

‘Speed was of the essence: everything moved so fast there was no point in long-range planning’ [120].

Focused on the quarter, the stock price became everything [125].

‘Deal closings were accelerated so that earnings could be posted by the end of the quarter’ [127].

‘The danger was that skewing curves to generate more profits was not only improper but also raised the likelihood that the curves would turn out to be way off base, producing a big mismatch between Enron’s projections and a reality it would eventually have to face. But that, of course, was a future concern, far removed from the crisis of the immediate quarter’ [128].

‘There was a conviction at Enron that clever accounting could alter business reality’ [142].

‘Here’s how another former employee describes the process: “Say you have a dog, but you need to create a duck on the financial statements. Fortunately, there are specific accounting rules for what constitutes a duck: yellow feet, white covering, orange beak. So you take the dog and paint its feet yellow and its fur white and you paste an orange plastic beak on its nose, and then you say to your accountants, ‘This is a duck! Don’t you agree that it’s a duck?’ And the accountants say, ‘Yes, according to the rules, this is a duck.’ Everybody knows that it’s a dog, not a duck, but that doesn’t matter, because you’ve met the rules for calling it a duck”’ [142].

‘Over time, Glisan’s affability slowly morphed into the swaggering arrogance that characterized so many Enron executives’ [154].

They ‘got huge bonuses not on the basis of how a deal worked out over time but on how profitable it appeared on the day the contract was signed’ [180 (italics in original)].

‘They played with the price curves and other assumptions to disguise reality’ [182].

‘Whalley has the trader’s ability to strip his decision-making of all emotional content, which he viewed as noneconomic.’ This is fine, except ‘he saw everything in terms of split-second economics; if he couldn’t buy or sell something right this second, it seemed to have no value to him’ [214 (italics in original)].

‘They believed that the market was the ultimate judge of their work and their worth. The market created a true meritocracy: you either made money because you made good trading decisions or you lost money because you made bad ones. Enron traders didn’t concern themselves with ethics or morality apart from the unyielding judgment of the markets. Maximizing profit was not inconsistent with doing good, they believed, but an inherent of it, and the judge of good and bad was the immediate consequences of a split-second trade. The highest compliment a trader could pay a colleague was to call him intellectually pure. The worst insult was to accuse someone of making a deal that wasn’t economic’ [216].

Enron painted itself as a logistics company, which was a lie to stakeholders in order to keep the stock up [219-220].

‘Enron’s stated profits had more to do with its accounting than the reality of its business’ [230].

‘Everything was perception; nothing was real’ [261].

‘It seems that no one agrees what the rules should be when it comes to a commodity that is essential to modern life’ [280].

Just Forgiveness

Anthony Bash, Just Forgiveness: exploring the Bible, weighing the issues (London: SPCK, 2011), xiii + 162 pp.

In this book, Anthony Bash makes a number of important observations about forgiveness. Amongst other things, he notes that when Jesus asks his Father to forgive his persecutors “for they do not know what they are doing” [Luke 23:34], their ignorance means that they cannot receive forgiveness, and therefore Jesus cannot forgive them. Rather, Jesus prays for his Father to forgive them, presumably at a later date when they have been made aware of who they killed. (Might Acts 2:22-24, 40-41 be an example of this?) It is not the case, argues Bash, that Jesus (or his Father) forgives his persecutors for not knowing what they are doing.

He goes on to note a three-fold pattern of confession, repentance, and restitution in the Old Testament [17]. ‘The three-fold pattern was not a formulaic hoop through which people had to jump in order to receive forgiveness, but an outward expression of inner faith. Forgiveness only took place if someone had that inner faith’ [20]. He also qualifies that ‘an offer to forgive (or something akin to forgive, as we shall see is probably the case) can stimulate people to respond by acknowledging their wrongdoing and repenting’ [21].

The force of these preliminary remarks is to make clear the interpersonal nature of forgiveness. It takes two to tango. It takes two to forgive: one to give, and one to receive. And receiving forgiveness begins with a confession of – or apology for – wrongdoing. Then, with that in mind, Bash suggests five features of forgiveness. ‘There are five features of the forgiveness quintet … 1 A Response to wrongdoing … 2 Repentance … 3 Acts that are morally wrong … 4 Restored relationships … 5 Justice’ [30 (bold in original)]. (And Bash qualifies that justice is about the restoration of character [31].)

He goes on to differentiate between “thick” and “thin” forgiveness depending on how many features forgiveness exhibits [37]. For example, a forgiving response to a morally wrong act that did not result in (or begin with) repentance, restored relationships, and/or justice is “thin” forgiveness. In this sense “thin” forgiveness is an intrapersonal act, whereas thick forgiveness is an interpersonal one.

Other examples of “thin” forgiveness come later. When Paul exhorts the Corinthian church to forgive the man expelled [2 Corinthians 2:7, 10], ‘there is no evidence that the offender had wronged anyone in the Corinthian community’ [46]. So Paul exhorts forgiveness merely in the sense of acceptance.

However, I did wonder whether Bash’s criteria of moral wrongdoing (and therefore guilt) might not fit a culture more concerned with shame (if indeed it is such a culture). Whereas guilt concerns the individual before the law, shame concerns the relationships of a community. So when Bash notes contra Paul that a community cannot forgive – only the individuals within it can – he might be betraying a Western mindset (of guilt). He further notes that ‘the forgiveness is not for a moral wrong done to the community members but only for the shock, hurt and disappointment that they may have suffered, that is, for the personal and social difficulties arising from the offender’s wrongdoing’ [46]. So what Bash perceives to be “only” personal and social difficulties might actually have more gravity for the the Corinthians. But far from weakening his next proposal these thoughts about shame and grace only seem to strengthen it.

‘I propose that we should now refer to “forgivenesses”, to alert us to the variety of forms that forgiveness can take, and not speak of “forgiveness”, as if we are referring to one phenomenon that always takes the same form and is always the same for us as it is for God. Some of these “forgivenesses” may be “thick”, others “thin”, but most will be somewhere in between’ [38]. To give another example, ‘Matthew, reflecting what is clearly the teaching of Jesus, emphasizes the idea of duty when it comes to forgiveness. In contrast, Paul emphasizes the idea of “gift” in the meaning of forgiveness and does not describe forgiveness as a duty.’ So ‘a different starting point – that forgiveness is a duty or that forgiveness is a virtue – can lead to forgiveness taking different forms or shapes’ [80].

In the remainder of the book, Bash devotes chapters to forgiveness as a gift (charizomai), forgiveness as letting go (aphiemi), the different New Testament books (reinforcing the varieties of forgiveness), and other types of forgiveness (therapeutic forgiveness and restorative justice, neither of which are examples of “thick” forgiveness).

Good Value

Stephen Green, Good Value: Choosing a Better Life in Business (London: Penguin, 2009), xii + 212 pp.

Ordained in the Church of England and former Chairman of HSBC, Stephen Green offers us these choice cuts:

‘There has been a massive breakdown of trust: trust in the financial system, trust in bankers, trust in business, trust in business leaders, trust in politicians, trust in the media, trust in the whole process of globalization – all have been severely damaged, in rich countries and poor countries alike’ [xi].

‘A large part of our quest as humans is to explore what we can come to accept as our “home” in the profoundest sense, for that is where we will discover our true spiritual purpose’ [18].

‘Compartmentalization – dividing life up into different realms, with different ends and subject to different rules – is a besetting sin of human beings’ [18].

‘Compartmentalization is a refuge from ambiguity; it enables us to simplify the rules by which we live in our different realms of life, and so avoid – if we are not careful – the moral and spiritual questions. One of the most obvious and commonplace manifestations of the tendency to compartmentalize is seeing our work life as being a neutral realm in which questions of value (other than shareholder value) or of rightness (other than what is lawful) or of wisdom (other than what is practical) need not arise. But there are many other ways in which we compartmentalize our lives. Work, family, friends, society – these are different (though often partially overlapping) realms of life, and it is all too easy, in a thousand ways, to play to different rules in each of them. These different realms of being also overlap with the inner realm of the self (though none of them completely): by what star does that inner self navigate? And would it even know when it is off course? Compartmentalization helps to shut such questions out’ [18].

‘He [Calvin] wrote, “Usury is not now unlawful, except insofar as it contravenes equity and brotherly union”’ [69 quoting Institutes IV, 20, 18].

‘Urban transformation of the world is the most important social, political and cultural consequence of globalization’ [89].

‘Cities embody the drive of humanity for connectedness – for society, convenience, stimulation and wealth’ [90].

‘London is the world’s purest example of a world city: it is quintessentially organic, open and kaleidoscopic, and constantly growing outwards culturally from its deep roots in the past’ [94].

‘When the history books are written about this period [the 2008 financial crisis], I believe they will miss an important dimension if they do not focus on the pervasive stress and sheer tiredness of those involved – whether policymakers, regulators or bankers’ [120].

‘Confidence is followed by foolhardiness, then by fear followed by a crash, followed by witch-hunts – and eventually by renewed growth. The human emotions appear to repeat themselves: the greed, the panic, the shame and anger, remorse and sobriety – until exuberance reasserts itself’ [124].

‘What is progress? Is it the accumulation of wealth, or should it involve a broader definition of the quality of life which takes into account a more integrated understanding of well-being. Surveys consistently show that economic progress has not been accompanied by the expected improved level of happiness, and that the price paid for it by many has been the quality of human relationships. On average, people do not think of themselves as happier or better off than their parents were – even though the material standard of living is, in so many societies, unquestionably higher. And there has in particular been a marked decline in the sense of trust. The collapse in perceived trustworthiness is obvious with respect to the banking sector, but also applies to business more broadly – as well as in family life and in social relationships generally’ [131].

‘The word “credit” derives from the Latin word credere, meaning “to believe”. So a credit crisis is, by the very meaning of the word, a crisis of confidence’ [132].

‘If we are to restore trust and confidence in the markets, we must therefore address what is at its root a moral question … It is as if we have grown increasingly to accept the idea that the value of what we do is fully delineated by the market, by regulatory compliance and the law of contract. If the market will bear it, if the law allows it, if there is a contract, then no other test of rightness need apply. Yet we would not (or should not, at least) live our private lives this way … What has happened is that we have succumbed to the sin of compartmentalization … As individuals we do not govern our behaviour simply by what is allowed by law or regulation. We have our own codes of conduct, and hold ourselves accountable. We take responsibility for our actions. The institutions of capitalism – businesses, banks, and other institutions of the financial markets – have to do the same. This is the sine qua non for the restoration of public trust in the market, and is therefore essential for the overall health of society’ [132].

‘If everything is defined by price, not value, then surely social fragmentation follows, since all that matters is a supply of cash rather than shared blood, community, friendship, or beliefs’ [136].

‘It [microfinance] may not make people rich; nonetheless, it is profoundly transformative’ [144].

‘The response [to what has gone wrong] has to be renewed commitment to the real task of sustainable value maximization. And it is clear that this has four elements. First, there is of course the direct and basic responsibility to earn as good a return as is sustainably possible on the capital entrusted to the company by its shareholders … And, second, … in order to earn the best return over time, businesses need to nurture their customer relationships and service … A third element of value maximization – the way a business engages with its people – takes us straight into the realm of sustainability and corporate responsibility … The fourth element of sustainable value maximization is therefore the way in which the business engages with the communities in which it operates’ [155-156].

‘There will always be those who have not merely more than others, but more than they could conceivably need. There are only two possible responses to this fact for those of us in this position: we can, in effect shrug our shoulders; or we can hear the still, small voice of conscience. That voice reminds us – if we listen – that something is owed by the affluent. And a debt not paid makes a debtor who is guilty. Hence that voice. We often hear affluent people speaking of wanting to “give something back to the community” – the very phrase conveys a sense that something is owed. At its worst, this response may be little more than a transaction à la Melmotte: doing something because it is expected, and because it wins social points. In which case it is simply one more transaction of the kind discussed by Simmel – the objectification of human relationships through the medium of money and exchange. At its heart, this is not giving back what is owed: rather, it is a transaction which is an investment.
‘At its best, though, a different – and deeper – form of transaction takes place when we respond to that voice. The giver discovers that his or her spirit becomes involved, and may then even experience an inkling of a sense that the debt is not just being repaid in the giving, but being forgiven. And the sense that the debt is forgiven in the giving can then bloom into a sense that the debtor is forgiven – for all the imperfections through which the affluence has been generated, and for all the presumption that the affluence may have generated in its time’ [159].

The Shawshank Redemption II

This is the second of two posts.

HOPE

Andy keeps hope alive through (amongst other things) guile (as we have seen), vision and persistence. Let’s begin with vision. One of the recurring questions is how released cons will fare. On the one hand, Brooks kills himself. On the other, Andy escapes to Mexico. So when Red’s turn comes, will he choose life or death? Will he end up like Brooks or like Andy? Since Andy has given Red a vision of Mexico, Red chooses the latter. The redemption of Red – and that presumably alluded to in the title – comes through this vision. Perhaps somewhat similarly, Moses envisions the people of Israel [4:29-30a] with the promise of a land brimming with milk and honey [3:17]. But as in the case of Red, this initially has little impact: “Moses reported this to the Israelites, but they did not listen to him because of their discouragement and harsh labor” [6:9]. (Further, perhaps God gives them the law in order to survive in the land. Perhaps in the same way that an institutionalized ex-con might struggle to adapt to the world outside [Stephen King, ‘Rita Hayworth and the Shawshank Redemption’ in Stephen King, Different Seasons (London: Warner Books, 1982), 48-49, 108-109. Henceforth, ‘RHSR’], Israel would struggle to adapt to the new land without the law.) But before we explore persistence, the film famously embellishes vision and hope with beauty. Andy blasts out The Marriage of Figaro (‘Deutino: Che soave zeffiretto’) across the prison.

RED (V.O.)
I tell you, those voices soared.
Higher and farther than anybody in
a gray place dares to dream. It was
like some beautiful bird flapped
into our drab little cage and made
these walls dissolve away … and for
the briefest of moments – every
last man at Shawshank felt free.
[Frank Darabont, The Shawshank Redemption: The Shooting Script (New York: Newmarket, 1996), 64 (scene 145). Henceforth Shawshank]

His punishment is solitary confinement, about which he says.

ANDY
I had Mr Mozart to keep me company.
Hardly felt the time at all.

RED
Oh, they let you tote that record
player down there, huh? I could’a
swore they confiscated that stuff.

ANDY
(taps his heart, his head)
The music was here … and here.
That’s the one thing they can’t
confiscate, not ever. That’s the
beauty of it. Haven’t you ever felt
that way about music, Red?

RED
Played a mean harmonica as a younger
man. Lost my taste for it. Didn’t
make much sense on the inside.

ANDY
Here’s where it makes most sense.
We need it so we don’t forget.

RED
Forget?

ANDY
That there are things in this world
not carved out of gray stone. That
there’s a small place inside of us
they can never lock away, and that
place is called hope.

RED
Hope is a dangerous thing. Drive a
man insane. It’s got no place here.
Better get used to the idea.

ANDY
(softly)
Like Brooks did?
[Shawshank, 65 (scene 150)]

The point about memory is a pertinent one. It is captured when God reveals his name to Moses.

God said to Moses, “I-AM-WHO-I-AM. Tell the People of Israel, ‘I-AM sent me to you.’
God continued with Moses: “This is what you’re to say to the Israelites: ‘GOD, the God of your fathers, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob sent me to you.’ This has always been my name, and this is how I will always be known [3:14-15].

The memory of Abraham connotes the promise.

I’ll make you a great nation
and bless you.
I’ll make you famous;
you’ll be a blessing.
I’ll bless those who bless you;
those who curse you I’ll curse.
All the families of the Earth
will be blessed through you.
[Genesis 12:2-3]

And God was the same then as he is now. Perhaps that is part of the force of his name – I-AM-WHO-I-AM. Nonetheless, the point is clear: Israel will be blessed and Egypt cursed. God’s word is their hope. But wherein lies Andy Dufresne’s hope? Answer: in the recurring leitmotif of geology. It comes up several times, for example: ‘Andy smiled his small, composed smile and asked … what would happen to a block of concrete if a drop of water fell on it once every year for a million years’ [‘RHSR’, 50 cf. 38, 75, 97]. By such persistence Andy obtains books for the prison library [‘RHSR’, 49-51] and tunnels his escape [‘RHSR’, 92-93]. This is accompanied by a good dose of luck: for example, he just happens to have taken classes in geology [‘RHSR’, 97], never moves cell, never has a cell mate (with one short-term exception) [‘RHSR’, 102], and is never caught tunnelling [‘RHSR’, 99-101]. Persistence and luck. Frank Darabont, director of the film, writes this.

I consider myself very lucky, but I also believe you make your own luck by applying the elbow-grease of determination and effort, by seizing every opportunity and nurturing a persistent belief in yourself no matter how bleak your chances seem (this philosophy lurks at the very heart of The Shawshank Redemption, and is one of the main reasons I fell in love with King’s story) [Shawshank, 184 (italics in original)].

Or does Andy just happen to be the right person in the right place at the right time? Either way, compare this with Moses. Moses singularly lacks belief – both belief in God and belief in himself, for example: ‘Moses raised another objection to GOD: “Master, please, I don’t talk well. I’ve never been good with words, neither before nor after you spoke to me. I stutter and stammer’ [4:10]. God suggests that his lack of self-belief follows from his lack of God-belief [4:11]. Intriguingly, and later on, Moses is neither stuttering nor stammering but fuming at pharaoh. ‘Moses, seething with anger, left Pharaoh’ [11:8]. The signs that God performs seem to strengthen Moses’ belief in God’s promises, and therefore his self-belief.

CONCLUSION

In sum, whereas hope comes “from below” in RHSR (symbolized by geology), hope breaks in “from above” for Israel. One is “lottery” hope, the other biblical hope. These need not be mutually exclusive for what breaks in “from above” can work through what lies below. But the converse does not hold. RHSR represents a reductionist, truncated view of biblical hope – one that depends on geology, luck, and the persistence of time.

The Shawshank Redemption I

This is the first of two posts.

“Hope is a good thing ... maybe the best of things, and no good thing ever dies” [Stephen King, ‘Rita Hayworth and the Shawshank Redemption’ in Stephen King, Different Seasons (London: Warner Books, 1982), 112. Henceforth, ‘RHSR’.]

Frank Darabont’s screen version of ‘RHSR’ routinely frequents polls for people’s favourite film. It may be no coincidence that hope is it’s main theme. As the strap line reads: ‘Fear can hold you prisoner … Hope can set you free.’ Hope is a theme for our times.

In what follows, I will compare and contrast both versions (book and screen) with the biblical book of Exodus. We will begin by noting shared patterns of oppression and resistance, before considering their different accounts of hope.

DEHUMANIZING OPPRESSION: HUMANIZING RESISTANCE

The first chapter of Exodus sets up a striking contrast between the nameless oppressor and the named agents of resistance: ‘The king of Egypt had a talk with the two Hebrew midwives; one was named Shiprah and the other Puah’ [1:15]. The pharaoh is never mentioned by name, which could be for a number of reasons. Perhaps this captures the way in which oppressors dehumanize themselves and others. Indeed, perhaps not naming him is an act of non-violent resistance against the pharaoh. It takes the momentum of one who dehumanizes himself further, by blotting his name out of history altogether – much like the first (failed) kinsman-redeemer in Ruth 4. (The Hebrew simply calls the kinsman-redeemer almoni peloni, literally “so and so” – which I prefer to render “Baloney Maloney”.) If so, then the very naming of the two Hebrew midwives resists the dehumanization of Israel. Moreover, perhaps the pharaoh remains nameless to ensure that this book resonates with the oppressed throughout history. Insert your own oppressor into the blank.

We will return to the issue of guile later. But it is enough to note now that the protagonist of ‘RHSR’, Andy Dufresne, uses guile to humanize screws and cons alike. While tarring the roof of a factory, Andy hears one of the guards moaning about tax. As a former banker, he offers to help – in return for a few beers for his fellow prisoners. ‘It lasted twenty minutes, that beer-break, and for those twenty minutes we felt like free men’ [‘RHSR’, 47] Andy subsequently goes on to make his financial expertise available to all the guards [‘RHSR’, 51], which the film further embellishes. The film imagines Andy shaking hands with these guards, glimpsing equality because only equals shake hands [Frank Darabont, The Shawshank Redemption: The Shooting Script (New York: Newmarket, 1996), 49 (scene 92). Henceforth Shawshank].

Whereas the oppression in Exodus is characterized by enslavement and infanticide, the oppression in ‘RHSR’ is characterized by a miscarriage of justice [14-23, 61-69] and systemic corruption. One the one hand, the oppressive system can be just as faceless as pharaoh. King even uses the biblical phrase “the powers that be” to describe it [‘RHSR’, 38]. On the other hand, it is embodied by Norton.

NORTON

Norton’s distortion of the Christian faith symbolises the systemic corruption – a point made in passing in the book [‘RHSR’, 51], but embellished in the film. There, Norton even takes the place of Christ. In a surprise cell inspection Norton finds the Andy reading the Bible.

NORTON
I’m pleased to see you reading this.
Any favourite passages?

ANDY

“Watch ye therefore, for ye know not
when the master of the house cometh.”

NORTON
(smiles)
Luke. Chapter 13, verse 35. I’ve
always liked that one.
(strolls the cell)
But I prefer: “I am the light of
the world. He that followeth me
shall not walk in darkness, but
shall have the light of life.”

ANDY
John. Chapter 8, verse 12.
[Shawshank, 45 (scene 86)]

From here, Andy is forced to follow Norton into his corrupt world, receiving perks (the light of life) for doing so.

GUILE

However, Andy uses guile and perseverance to escape the prison and frame the warden, who subsequently kills himself [Shawshank, 45 (scene 86)]. (In the novella, the warden is neither framed nor killed, but simply resigns [‘RHSR’, 95].) The fate of the warden is thus similar to the fate of pharaoh’s chariots. ‘The waters returned, drowning the chariots and riders of Pharaoh’s army that had chased after Israel into the sea. Not one of them survived’ [14:28]. And Andy’s guile is similar to that of the Hebrew midwives. They too do not comply with an oppressor who has ordered them to slaughter male babies. ‘The king of Egypt called in the midwives. “Why didn’t you obey my orders? You’ve let those babies live!” The midwives answered Pharaoh, “The Hebrew women aren’t like the Egyptian women; they’re vigorous. Before the midwife can get there, they’ve already had the baby”’ [1:18-19]. In both stories, the fearlessness of the protagonists flows from hope. For the midwives, it flows from their fear of God [1:17]. For Andy, it flows from somewhere else. But from where, exactly?

We’ll consider this further in the next post.