Why I LIve in The Village

This may be old news to some of you but I recently watched (for the third time) M. Night’s “The Village”. (warning: I'm about to explain the plot). The basic plot of the movie is that a group of people purchase a large area of land and set up a town in the style of 19th century America and pay the government to not allow any plans to fly over the land or allow anyone outside of the village to enter the town-ever. In doing so, they attempt to preserve the sacredness of a place unaffected by tragedies such as violent crime, war and even the use of money. The crisis of the movie comes when one of the characters, upon hearing of the engagement of a girl that he is fond of, proceeds to repeatedly stab the fiancé in the stomach. In this way, a society that was supposed to be segregated from violent crime has been marred by a terrible incident that seemingly will result in death if new medicines from ‘the towns’ can not be retrieved in time. Now, to go along with this the elders of the village (those who started it) have led those in the village to believe that there are monsters in the woods (those we don’t speak of) and that they have reached a deal with the monsters; they don’t go into the woods and the monsters will not come into the village. The elders have implanted the idea of fear into the minds of their children to keep them from being corrupted (ie. Discovering the truth about their town).

Our society is built on fear. A simple perusal of the 6 o’clock news will tell you to be afraid because terrorists have been active or be afraid because mosquitoes have killed another person or that someone has been abducted. Fear is paralyzing and does keep people away from things like transit, tourist destinations or even the highway. These fears, while in some cases exagerrated, are real.

This is real fear because it is real cause for concern. In the Village however the fear was in the minds of the those in the village and kept them from leaving. I had a thought that maybe I live in the Village because at least one aspect of society- consumerism, also leads me with the idea of fear. Let me explain.

Consumerism tells me that I am inadequate as I am and must purchase or be involved in whatever they tell me because without it, I am not as valuable. Thus fear is used to control first what I think of myself and second what others think about me. For instance, I own a very nice (rusty) Ford which is good for me. However, if I parked beside a brand new Mercedes- who does society instantly say is more important? Generally we will automatically associate expensive with worth and not just monetary worth but intrinsic value. To me, this means that I’m living in the Village. It means that people in our country are afraid to be poor because there is no value (instrinsic?) in poverty. It mean that we have all been sold a lie by the elders (Microsoft? Car dealerships? Schools, Malls?) and we have (generally) failed to venture into the forest for fear that ‘those we don’t speak of’ (being uninfluenced by societal values) will hurt us. By this I mean that we continue to accept the idea that more stuff means more value, higher tuition means better education, (Tyndale is really good at this…) or a lawyer is somehow better than a garbage man.

We can not believe this lie. My sense of value can not come from believing that I’m better by what I do or own. I can not be afraid not to be apart of something just because society tells me otherwise. The way to escape this village is to, like the blind girl (ironic?) in the movie to recognize these fears and venture into the forest. I suppose that in the forest may be a place that Jesus calls the abundant life. A life free from the fear that I must measure up to the standard of society-- a life free from being tied down with possessions, looking for value in comparison and free from this faulty concept of reality that we’re being sold everyday.

The trouble is that I can not move completely out of the Village unless maybe I moved very far north into a remote community free from the 6 o’clock news and malls. However I have a feeling that like the actual movie, just because I separated myself from what I perceived to be evil- evil would find me. The prophet Jeremiah says that the heart is deceitful above all things and beyond cure. This is why no matter how hard they tried, the people in The Village could not escape such a heinous crime. This is also why we will have to constantly recognize that we do live in a village of lies based on fear and must somehow push our way into 'the forest' in order to live in the truth.