Forget the apocalypse; be the Zombie revolution (What I learned from Warm Bodies)
4 things I learned from the film, Warm Bodies:
1. Sometimes I’m the Zombie
There are days when it seems I’m staggering and grunting my way through life, and my humanity goes underground. In those moments I fall dead to life, unable to move, feel or respond with any sense of connectedness to myself or the world around me. In those times, only the 40-year habit of living keeps me going but for all intents and purposes I have vacated the premises of my heart. I’m the undead – someone who is deceased but behaving like I’m alive.
During other periods of life, being a Zombie had its advantages. I survived a traumatic and abusive childhood and youth by becoming a Zombie. Shutting down and being dead on the inside was my way of coping, self-protection and surviving. But once that switch gets turned off, it’s not so easy finding it and turning it back on again. And even when you do, you know where to find it to turn it off again. It’s so predictable with me during those times come:
Jim gets hurt -> Jim goes Zombie
Jim gets scared -> Jim goes Zombie
Jim feels like a failure -> Jim goes Zombie
Jim doesn’t like himself -> Jim goes Zombie
Though the plug gets pulled and Jim drains out, I can still put on a fairly convincing act of being alive, at times even fooling myself. A time or two (or three) I’ve traveled quite a stretch of road before realizing that I had left myself at a rest area several miles… states back!
2. Our humanity saves us
All human beings desire and seek the same thing – acceptance, love, belonging, worth, freedom, connection, meaning, fulfillment and peace. And we all fear the absence of them. Though we imagine being separated from these and strive to obtain them, the truth is that we actually ARE all those things, and we can be expressions of them to each other.
The central character of the film, Warm Bodies, was a Zombie named “R” – he could only remember the first letter of his former name. Rediscovering his heart and his humanity, R was revived and reconnected to life.
Religion insists that we need to be saved FROM our humanity. But Warm Bodies depicts a scenario of being saved BY our humanity. It is often taught that the kind of holiness and godliness acceptable to God is something more and better than what we can be on our own as humans, forgetting that God’s being is the source of our being. In the Book of Genesis after God created humankind, God declared that it was good. And before Jesus ever did anything that was recorded in the gospels, God said, “This is my son in whom I am well pleased.” Before human beings lift a finger (including Jesus) we are pronounced as good and members of God’s family – not because of what we do but because of who we are. If there’s one message that comes shining through in the life and teaching of Jesus it is that Jesus wanted us to understand our own identity in him and as him.
The distinguishing characteristic of the kind of transformation that God approves is not becoming more “holy” but becoming more human – the transformation of a heart of stone into a heart of flesh. In the film, the Zombies rediscovered their hearts and were the ones who raised the bar on what it meant to be human for those who had technically been living all along. This strikes me as something God would orchestrate – using Zombies to show others what it meant to be truly alive.
3. Impossible is nothing in the presence of love
I wonder how many Zombies I cross paths with every day – people going through the motions of life but who are dead and numb inside. However we might see or experience others on the outside, and regardless of how Zombie-ish people sometimes seem, the divine spark is inside every human being. Sometimes that divine spark is a faint flicker, lost somewhere deep inside a person. Is it any wonder? People suffer deep hardship, hurt, and heartache in life and go Zombie just like I did. But it’s clear in Warm Bodies that the presence and expression of love is what awakens people to the truth of who they are and the treasure they carry inside them, and which IS them. At every turn it was the presence and expression of love that was waking people up, bringing people back to life, healing them, tearing down the walls that once divided people, making all things new, and creating whole new possibilities that people had never imagined possible.
Religion seems to always be finding something wrong with people, insisting we are bad, sinners, filthy rags and incurably repulsive to God. Is there really any mystery as to why people live destructively when they are emphatically told this is who they are??? On the other hand, people who associated with Jesus discovered and expressed their goodness, love, power, and beauty. It was the presence and expression of love in and through Jesus that allowed others to discover and be this as well. This is who we are and meant to be for each other. This is what transforms the world, and awakens the living dead.
4. Forget the apocalypse; be the Zombie revolution
So much of the energy of religion seems to be about doomsday and the apocalyptic ending of the world. Every day there is some other religious expert spotting another sign that the end is near. But in the Old Testament Book of Ezekiel there is a vision of new life being breathed into dead bodies, and them coming alive as never before. Jesus himself is a witness to the truth that the spark of divine life is never snuffed out. Despite all the talk of doomsday, death and destruction, I’m rolling the dice on LIFE. That doesn’t mean I’m going to sit back and hope it happens. It means I am going to divest my energies from the system of doomsday, death and destruction, and wake up each day, choose life and make love present in every moment… in every encounter… in every interaction… in every choice… in every thought… in every response. I’m going to take on life and love as a way of being in the world. If R can do it, I can! We have that same beating heart. And I’m betting all the other Zombies out there do too.
