Janie B. Cheaney: Why we fear

NICK EICHER, HOST: Today is Tuesday, October 29th. Good morning! This is The World and Everything in It from listener-supported WORLD Radio. I’m Nick Eicher.

MARY REICHARD, HOST: And I’m Mary Reichard. Here’s WORLD commentator Janie B. Cheaney now with a reflection on our culture’s fascination with the macabre and why we should not fear.

JANIE B. CHEANEY: C.S. Lewis writes: “Almost the whole of Christian theology could perhaps be deduced from two facts: (a)That men make coarse jokes, and (b)That they feel the dead to be uncanny.”

As he goes on to explain, both phenomena indicate an uneasy disconnect between body and soul, as though we humans were uncomfortable with being human. We find reproduction funny because it associates us with animals, even though we know we’re something more. We find death uncanny because we perceive that we’re not made to die.

Does that “uncanniness” account for our culture’s fascination with Halloween thrills and chills? Whatever we fear fascinates us, but the fear sparked by a rattlesnake is not the same as that inspired by a ghost or a zombie. As there are degrees of fear, there are also kinds.

I divide scary stories into two main categories: terror and horror. Horror stories include one or more of the following: buckets of blood and an innocent victim or victims.

Horror stories operate like shock therapy. Fans claim this is cathartic—dramatizing our deepest fears in order to drain the potency from them. Fair enough, but I wonder how much is too much. For another, horror scores its greatest impact from mutilating the human body. How can watching the desecration of God’s “fearfully and wonderfully made” work be a pleasure?

Finally, horror is obsessed with death. For Christians, death is the wages of sin. Christ drew the sting of death by the terrible necessity of taking it on himself, but to flirt with it, even glamorize it, may not be healthy.

Terror stories are another cauldron of fish. They may involve blood but don’t rely on it. They almost always include a strong element of the occult or supernatural; and—this is important—they grant agency to the victim, who helps bring about his own destruction. Here’s how Mary Shelly described her inspiration for the most iconic Halloween story of all time:

I saw the pale student of unhallowed arts kneeling beside the thing he had put together. I saw the hideous phantasm of a man stretched out, and then, on the working of some powerful engine, stir with an uneasy, half vital motion . . . [I thought,] “I have found it! What terrified me will terrify others.”

The novel Shelly wrote from this uncanny vision is seldom read today but the “hideous phantasm” she created is recognized the world over. When a story creates its own frame of reference, there’s always a reason. Dr. Frankenstein, that “pale student of unhallowed arts” is potentially all of us, lusting for power and self-glorification. Tales like Frankenstein, “The Tell-Tale Heart,” even Rosemary’s Baby, can be a powerful reminder of our enemy the devil, seeking souls to devour, and that is legitimately scary.

But, as Martin Luther penned in his great hymn: “The prince of darkness grim, we tremble not for him; his rage we can endure, for lo! his doom is sure; one little word shall fell him.”

That word is Jesus, the one who bore our terror and horror was mutilated for us, so that we will not fear.

I’m Janie B. Cheaney.

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