Spider-Man 3 is
not a very good film, but there's a scene that resonates with me on
an almost primal level. Peter Parker is struggling to divest himself
of the alien symbiote Venom, which takes the form of a black version
of his Spider-Man suit. It wraps itself around him, dark and sticky
and inescapable, corrupting him as it leaches him of his conscience.
He only gets rid of it with the help of church bells: the toll of
music, liturgy, call to worship.
I recognize that
thing, I said to myself the first time I saw Venom tightening its
grip around Peter even as he fought to be free. It's inside me.
“There is nothing
outside a person that by going in can defile, but the things that
come out are what defile.” (Mark 7:15)
When I was little, I
didn't know depression could happen to me. In my mind, I called it
“sticky black sludge”: the inexplicable but overwhelming sense of
worthlessness, the despicable inability to do or think or feel
anything good. As I grew older, I reconceptualized the sticky black
sludge as the sin
that dwells within me. Only after a friend suggested that I'd
probably been mildly depressed my whole life did it occur to me that
there could be another explanation, and maybe I should seek
diagnosis.
Sometimes I wonder if
depression makes me especially susceptible to a narrative of
salvation and redemption. This acute sense of my brokenness, the
engulfing and inescapable sin in which I am swallowed, the feeling
that I am nothing but ungodly wretchedness – is it, as a powerful
strand of Christian thought would have it, a reflection of the
objective reality of a fallen world that can only be saved by God's
grace? Or is it just the darkness of mental illness, a chemical
imbalance in my brain that has to be treated with medications and
therapy?
Can it be both?
“Save me, O God, for
the waters have risen up to my neck. I am sinking in deep mire, and
there is no firm ground for my feet.” (Psalm 69:1-2)
The part of prep school
Easter services that stays with me is the Good Friday portion. The
hymn “O Sacred Head” and the Pergolesi “Stabat Mater” are two
pieces that gave me chills and tears even as a theologically
unsophisticated child. Something about the death of Jesus, his
torture and agony on the cross, always called to me, powerfully and
awfully. But can a theology that centers on Christ's death ever be
other than morbid, scapegoating, cosmic child abuse?
I'm taking a theology
class on new materialism this semester, and some of my classmates
have been pretty resistant to theory that moves agency and
subjectivity away from the human individual. It makes good sense to
me, though. I am so used to feeling powerless, to feeling shaped and
buffeted by forces far beyond my control, to a feeling of absolute
dependence straight out of Schleiermacher, that I honestly find it a
little relieving to surrender some agency. Maybe that makes me
pathetic.
“I am a worm and no
man … I am poured out like water; all my bones are out of joint; my
heart within my breast is melting wax.” (Psalm 22:6, 14)
In my academic work, I
do everything right. I deconstruct foundations and resist absolutism.
I challenge orthodoxy and interrogate the taken-for-granted. I am
well-versed in the theological and ethical problems with satisfaction
atonement theory, and I know and espouse the alternatives.
And yet, in my lowest
moments, when I am in the grip of agony, crushed and breathless from
the total unbearableness of being me – that's when I return to
satisfaction atonement. That's when I cling to the blood of Christ.
It's all I can do.
I recoil from the death
of Jesus. But I need it.
