by Teri Ong
On my flight to London three weeks ago, I had occasion to watch a BBC documentary on the “Real Atlantis.” The premise of the archaeological detective story was that the quasi-historical accounts of the sunken city of Atlantis probably referred to the destruction of the Minoan culture by water. The current theory is that a giant tsunami inundated Minoan cities when the nearby volcano Thera blew up in the most gigantic eruption known to man. Educated guesses put the death toll at approximately 80% of the total Minoan population, which essentially ended their highly advanced civilization.
As a biblicist, I believe there could be many folkloric accounts across the world that are vague recollections of the actual sinking of all but 8 human beings world-wide. Nonetheless, the Minoan culture, one way or the other, was undoubtedly destroyed by water.
In the aftermath of the destruction, the 20% of the population that survived for a time was so grieved and bitter with their local god of the sea that they took their pricey idols, bashed them to pieces, and threw them into a fire. Archaeological remains show that they totally obliterated the faces of the idols before they burned them. The archaeologist explained that the desecration and destruction of the face represents the ultimate in emotional fury.
His remark struck a respondent note with me. I can still see in my mind’s eye the television images of the citizens of Bagdad pulling a large statue of Saddam Hussein down on its face in the street.
This semester I have been teaching C. S. Lewis’s Space Trilogy. There are several incidents of “going for the face” in the three books. For example, in Perelandra, in the final showdown with the demon-possessed Weston, the “good guy” Ransom cannot be assured of final victory until he has taken out Weston’s face with a rock and sent him into a fiery abyss. In the final scenes in That Hideous Strength the disembodied head of Alcasan is destroyed and a demonized preacher named Straik is beheaded to provide a fresh head for Alcasan’s demon. Earlier in the story, the once misguided Mark Studdock has seen in the face of his captor, Frost, the reality of the evil forces that are trying to claim his services forever. Lewis describes Studdock’s “instinctive desire to batter the Professor’s face into a jelly.” (p. 296, Scribner Paperback edition, 1996)
Taking out a person’s face takes away identity. Think about how we electronically block out someone’s face on television if they want or need to remain anonymous. People who want to disguise themselves often go no further than hiding or altering their faces. We would also agree that some of the most heinous crimes involve disfigurement of the victim’s face.
This line of thought caused me to make a connection with currently vogue denunciations of organized religion. In many ways, organized religion is the public “face” of religiosity or even spirituality. The Christian church, in all of its varieties, is the public face of Christianity. The public face of religion in general, and most specifically Christianity, is frequently dirty, often black and blue, and sometimes even bloodied.
One line of anti-Christian reasoning goes, “If organized Christianity looks so bad, I don’t want to have anything to do with it.” William Lobdell has recently written a book called Losing My Religion: How I Lost My Faith Reporting on Religion in America. The author, as a seeker at one point in his life, made what seemed to be a sincere profession of faith in Christ. But as the religion reporter for the Los Angeles Times, he saw the dirtied and bloodied face of Christianity so often, he eventually became repulsed and turned his back.
I have been a Christian for a long time, and I have seen the Church’s dirty face on more occasions than I care to recall. But I am not tempted to turn aside and avert my eyes. Perhaps it is because I have an expectation that if the Church on earth really is the bride of Christ (though not yet fully purified and perfected), Satan will do everything he can to desecrate and even obliterate her face. As John Milton so powerfully portrayed in Paradise Lost, Satan hates God, and even more specifically, Christ. Milton describes God’s enemy as “Mixed with obdurate pride and steadfast hate.” It would be more surprising to me if Satan didn’t try to make the public face of the church ugly and repulsive.
Much more evil has been perpetrated in the world by faceless hoards of the anti-religious and non-religious. Think of the experimental atrocities and genocide committed by the Nazis and the Japanese in WWII. Think of the Killing Fields. Think of the mass graves and gulags associated with communist revolutions around the world. Think of the violence and murder of present day drug cartels. Do not neglect to think of the human cost of government sanctioned abortion clinics, brothels, and perverted liaisons that lead to disease and death. Somehow, in spite of all this dark mayhem, Satan manages to keep looking like an angel of light.
Satan has always gone for the face of righteousness. The prophet Isaiah wrote that the appearance of Christ was “marred more than any man.” (Isaiah 52:14) Remember the crown of thorns? Remember the pulling out of his beard? What was the result of that ruination? Isaiah tells us, “He was despised and forsaken of men, A man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief; and like one from whom men hide their face, He was despised, and we did not esteem him.” (Isaiah 53:3)
But that is not the face we will look on when we personally see Christ for the first time. We will see the triumphant, resurrected Christ; we will see a face that, as the Apostle John wrote, is “like the sun shining in its strength.” (Revelation 1:16) When we see Him, “we will be like Him for we shall see Him as He is.” (I John 3:2) And He will present us to Himself clean and pure (I John 3:3), without any spot or wrinkle (Ephesians 5:27).
The face of the Church will not always be dirty, blemished, and scarred.
“Lord, I was blind, I could not see
In Thy marred visage any grace;
But now the beauty of Thy face
In radiant vision dawns on me.
For Thou hast made the blind to see,
The deaf to hear, the dumb to speak,
The dead to live; and so, I break
The chains of my captivity.”
–William Tidd Matson (1833-99)
