From Annabelle: Creation, photo courtesy Warner Bros. and Grace Hill Media
If it is let loose, fight it … no matter the risk
In most movies predicated on good versus evil, there’s usually someone who wants to take a more measured stance on the matter. Instead of staring the devil of the day down, they make deals. Or excuses. Or simply turn a blind eye to the problem.
Sometimes it’s with the best intentions in mind. In Annabelle: Creation, kindly Sister Charlotte doesn’t understand what a danger the evil behind Annabelle poses at first. When Janice, an orphan in her care warns Charlotte that they can’t stay in this creepy, haunted farmhouse—that they need to leave, like now—Charlotte tenderly shoos away her concerns. And when Charlotte sees that Janice was right, it’s almost too late for them all.
The motivations aren’t always so pure, of course. In 2013’s The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug, the danger of the dragon is downplayed in Laketown out of laziness and greed. Wonder Woman has to battle a battalion of disparate motivations to properly battle evil. But fear, it seems, is evil’s tool of choice to cow would-be heroes. Villains love to threaten the good guys with the loss of jobs and health, of their lives and the lives of their families. Turn away, evil says, and save these things you value.
The more we have to lose, the harder it seems to be to stand up to the forces that wish to silence us. Some of our leaders today, I think, feel like they have a lot to lose—and a lot to fear.
But as Christians, it seems that responding to evil—to point it out and to stand bravely and fearlessly on the other side—is what we’re to be doing here, right? I think the price of staying silent is, in the end, far more costly.