"Merci" Mr. Tarantino

I know pastors aren't supposed to watch Quinten Tarantino flicks. We're supposed to wear v-necked sweaters with leather patches on the elbows, sit in wing-back chairs sternly reading manuscripts of 19th century sermons by guys with thick ideas and thicker beards - carefully weighing the theological implications of their systematic discourses. But sometimes the deep truths of God are found not in bound volumes but in the thinly veiled holiness of a movie. Movies are the parables of our time. They are the new stained glass illumining the dusty truths we proclaim in church. You really ought to watch Inglorious Basterds and then read the rest of this entry. Beware - it is disturbing.

The bottom line of the film is that we are the real Inglorious Bastards - it is not Bradd Pitt or the Nazis. It's us. We are the shameful Bastards because we prefer revenge to mercy. As an audience we want a whole roomful of Nazis to burn to death, we want a Nazi Hollocaust. We want a bloodbath. We want lex talionis (eye for an eye). It brings us banal pleasure to imagine people who have betrayed us suffering.

The first thing I noticed in the opening scene was the number of times the French word, "merci" was spoken. It was the only word not translated to English in the subtitles. It would be easy to overlook except it is translated "thank you" one time to clue us into the fact that is wasn't translated before. In the opening subtitles, Tarantino gives us the sublimal message of the film "Mercy."

But the world hates mercy. From the beginning to the end of the film, the characters are bent on revenge for the brutality they've suffered. The Jewish-American characters decide to murder anyone in a Nazi uniform - they then scalp their victims in order to mentally torment the Germans as a form of revenge that breeds fear. The young Jewish woman who runs a movie theater gets revenge for the murder of her family by plotting the death of the Nazis. Everyone gets revenge and the movie is a bloodbath. (Most Christians focus on criticizing the violence but the violence is meant to criticize us.) If we had the power to get bloody revenge, would we?

Are we Inglorious Bastards? Would we like to see a Nazi Hollocaust? Would we like to torture the people who torture us? Do we take pleasure when our enemies suffer? Do we embrace mercy and forgiveness or do we want revenge? But is there a different way to live - a Jesus way? In this way we are called to be the opposite of an inglorious bastard - we are invited to live in the unforced ways of grace as a glorious child.