Where Christ-followers fear to tread, darkness takes hold.
I must confess that I have been putting this entry off. It’s been mostly written since 2016, but it never sat right with me to share it, even now. Truthfully, I expected my next entry in this series to be a borderline self-help rambling about “how to weather a spiritual desert,” never thinking for a moment that perhaps I might need to consult God in prayer before proceeding with a series overtly dedicated to Him. I confess arrogance in that respect. God saw to it that my mind be changed, as a month ago, just before setting out to write that episode, a disruption occurred.
We interrupt our regularly scheduled program for a nightmare, and a look beyond the veil.
I had a nightmare in the early days of 2020.
Usually when these dreams come, I ignore them as they consist of reasonably terrifying scenarios: getting eaten by a shark, natural disasters, discovering that you’ve withheld too little money for your quarterly taxes—basic fears. This dream was different, however. It brought with it a lingering fear that demanded to be articulated.
In the dream I was a teenager again, young and blind to the world. I was singing the song “Me and Bobby McGee” as I ran with a group of other teenagers as they made their way through the streets of a run-down city. Despite my best efforts, I couldn’t catch up with them, and despaired as I saw them shrink and fall between the cracks in the sidewalks and in between metal grates in dingy side alleys.
Somehow I passed beneath the grates and cracks myself, discovering the group once more in the ruins of a recreational center, where they had been waylaid at the entrance to a tennis court by a group of policemen who were intent on searching them for contraband.
I approached the police, and they regarded me with tacit acceptance. Apparently, they considered me to be separate from my peers. I requested that the other teenagers be let go, to which the police assented on the condition that I surrender my own belongings and my clothing in exchange for the others’ freedom.
As I considered, the other teenagers disappeared, and I was left standing naked in the Paris Island barracks from the film Full Metal Jacket as R Lee Ermy as Gunnery Sergeant Hartman berated me. Despite my obvious exposure and vulnerability in this moment, I gleefully began to mock the Sergeant to his face, raising the support of all of those around me.
A bloated harlot of a woman emerged from the shadows beside me, also laughing, and the barracks melted away as we began to laugh and twirl around in circles, strange carnival music beginning to play all around us.
As I spun around, I saw around me a paradise in vivid, overbright technicolor, characteristic of a psychedelic experience. I saw friends from my early exiled years, and icons of those times and the culture that I once sought to emulate: Janice Joplin, Jim Morrison, and a myriad of flower children, all frolicking in a frenzied dance of joy and revelry. We laughed, we sang, and we danced beside a crystal lake and through green meadows to the idyllic backyards of classic post-war Americana.
We spun around and round as the years passed away, and one-by-one these figures vanished until I was left in the empty living room of an old 1950s-era pre-fab house.
At first, I thought I was alone, but soon saw that there was a teenager present. I approached the teenager, and he spun around aggressively, demanding that I stay away from him. I was taken aback, and inquired as to why he was so defensive. Hadn’t he seen the wild abandon and joyous celebration? Hadn’t he seen the freedom we all had in this place, freedom from fear or want? Freedom from judgment?
He shook his head in contempt. “I came here as a part of a history project, I came to see where she died.”
My eyes were opened to my surroundings.
This once-vibrant corner of the world had become grey and worn. Tendrils of black mold and unknown filth stained the walls, floors, and ceilings around me. The perfectly manicured lawns outside had given way to dirt lots. The fields and lakes: now a black-water swamp rife with cypress trees.
I looked for any sign of the others I had been with. There was no one to be found. In their stead I found scatterings of refuse and paraphernalia. Used, rusted needles and rubber hosing. Broken pipes. Spent condoms.
I began to shake considering that the paradise I had been a part of, that seeming realization of pure liberty and freedom, had been little more than a skid-row. A den of addiction and degeneracy.
“It’s pretty terrible, isn’t it?” The teenager said. I looked back to him and tried to explain that this was all a mistake, I wasn’t a part of this scene of rot and ruin. He smirked: “if you aren’t apart of this, then what are you doing here?” He turned away, and my eyes were open once more:
I saw myself: no longer a teenager, no not even a young man. Somehow time had escaped me and I was in the bloated, greying body of a man in his late-60s picking over the leavings of a misspent youth.
I looked and saw some of the friends that had vanished across the swamp attending a concert at a distant fairground. I knew in that moment that if I could escape from this place—so long as I did not set foot inside the fairground—I would be alright.
The teenager’s words echoed through the air as I fled into the swamp to escape: “if you aren’t apart of this, then what are you doing here?” I saw a lantern light shine from between distant cypress knees.
I saw an old friend, emblematic of my life in exile, wearing a wide smile and a vacant stare, holding the lantern and wading through the swamp towards me.
“It’s time to go, Thorne,” he called out: “everyone is waiting for you. The concert is about to start.”
I stumbled in the muck, grabbing onto the exposed limb of a fallen tree. I yelled back dismissively, insisting that some things had come up and that I was no longer able to go along with the group.
His face didn’t change. He stared through me with wide eyes and smiled on with his crazed grin. “It’s time to go, Thorne. Everyone is waiting for you. The concert is about to start.”
I repeated my protests, more desperately this time, as I tried to lift myself from the mud around me. I desperately grabbed for something to help steady myself, but found only branches snarled with poison ivy vines and wisps of Spanish Moss dangling from above.
“It’s time to go, Thorne. Everyone is waiting for you. The concert is about to start.”
I lost my footing and plunged into the mud.
Blinking past the grime I saw that he was now standing above me, grinning down fiercely, his face illuminated from beneath by the lantern that now lay in the muck at his feet.
Vines wrapped around my body and in a flash I was bound and powerless.
“I’ve got you!”
He began to laugh as something far away began to drag me breathless towards the fairground.
I cried for help. Once—how feeble we are in nightmares—a second time—this time I was sitting upright in bed, crying out into the darkness.
Somewhere in the night I thought I heard the whistling of the carnival tune… but alas it was but my wife’s breathing, wheezing because of the winter chill.
I couldn’t sleep for a long while. This dream needed parsing.
The imagery was familiar. It was a reminder of how I fell away from God, and how God brought me back. How I fell in the sense that I shunned my deepest held convictions in a frivolous quest for approval by my peers. At first I had rationalized my actions, insisting that it was simple altruism: the desire to maintain an open mind and empathize with others in spite of their readiness to abandon me or each other at the first sign of trouble.
Then, a niche as a journeyman: one willing to mock authority and convention for the sake of spectacle and cachet; a showman, a clown embarking on a fool’s dance into a world of reckless abandon.
I recognized the teenager that I had been, and the life that I had been leading within that dream. The ruin and decay at the tail end of it was most certainly the destination I had been headed for not seven years ago when God called me out of darkness back towards Himself.
Seven years. Good Lord, I shudder to think how much damage I could have done to my life and mind had Christ not intervened. How much potential could have been lost? How many blessings foregone in the pursuit of pleasure? I don’t have to consider for long before the answers come to me:
Friends and acquaintances from that time have borne examples of that hellish “could have been” life. Persistent fear and paranoia, financial ruin and despair, early graves so soon abandoned and overgrown. The lingering sense of loss of what could have been.
A walk with Christ has removed me from those trails by necessity, removed me from those lives by force at times as the condemnation for my newfound path rang full and clear in my ears. The accusations of being a bigot, the vitriol at a moral stance misunderstood. The passive comments as though I were not present, the ceasing of calls and contact. The friendships grown cold.
From time to time, I’ll hear a song from those days and the memories will come flooding back. The names and faces that marked a season of wandering and introspection. The searching out of self, that desperate desire to beat the wind, to live free as if there were no tomorrow. The sense of a tribe searched out and found… and lost once more.
There is a place in my heart that goes back to those strange trails far from the beaten road where time seemed to stretch on forever in a haze of reckless abandon. There is a lingering gloom and regret over that season, an ever-present duskiness that pervades the memories. I wonder that we did not perceive the darkness of the season for what it was, though perhaps it takes redeemed spiritual eyes to see.
Just a few weeks after this hellish vision of a life not lived, I woke up on a bleary Monday morning to find a message on my phone. There had been a death. A name from long ago. So long ago, that it took me a moment to process.
Absent any details I wondered and prayed for God’s mercy.
In the back of my head, the music started to play, and I said with no hesitation, knowing full well the path that I was diverted from: “there, but for the grace of God, go I.”
—
Years ago, in a drunken state as I laid my head to rest, I had a moment of “the uncanny” where I felt as though I were no longer myself, and an internal compulsion posed a haunting question to me: “are you ready to meet God?”
I lied to myself, ignoring my inebriation and the utter shame I was bringing upon myself: “Yes, yes I am.”
I passed out.
When I woke up in the morning, I learned that one of our modern gods had fallen; a man who could rightfully claim a spot as a cultural icon and wellspring of inspiration for generations of artists, succumbed to illness and passed away.
I did some research, as I often do in the wake of a high-profile death, to see where he had placed his faith during life, and I saw a pattern that I have seen so many times echoed in celebrity memoirs, and heard from the lips of those I hold dear: a story of grappling for meaning in the face of a sure conviction that there was something grander beyond this sphere—a story of degradation transpiring in its pursuit—a story of dissatisfaction, and ultimately a looking back to the past and wondering where life had slipped through one’s proverbial fingers.
This man had dabbled in Buddhism, Nihilism, Satanism, and Christianity, before concluding later in life that he knew that he could not claim to be a “full atheist”, but said of the question of God, “don’t even pose it to me”. By this writing, there seems to be no indication that he ever truly addressed that question or realized an answer.
The implications of this should shake each and every one of us to the core; because this was a man who had attained everything that our world tells us that we should want—and he died still searching for that inexplicable last piece that would have made the entire puzzle make sense.
I am a filmmaker, and that means that I’m a student of pop-culture, for better or for worse. In my studies I have pored over the lives of the “big people” throughout history—the veritable movers and shakers—and I have found that this pattern of “searching in the face of deep existential angst, but never finding,” repeats itself time and time again. Errol Flynn comes to mind.
For the uninitiated, Errol Flynn is best remembered as Robin Hood, a heroic and romantic swashbuckler of the silver screen who starred in countless films over his storied career. Of course, his onscreen character posed a stark contrast to his actual life—he was a drunk, an addict, and a womanizer with a career of philandering so storied that his sexual escapades gave rise to a modern colloquialism—however crass, it is now a common utterance in many different social scenarios—“in like Flynn”.
The man bragged and boasted about his Wicked, Wicked Ways (the settled title of his autobiography, as the publisher would not allow for it to be titled In Like Me) but those who knew him best, and indeed those who partook in the reading of his memoirs reflected that he was a deeply troubled man grappling for purpose in all the wrong places. What’s more tragic—he knew it.
He knew he was looking for something deeper. He knew there was something more—and yet, he forewent the numerous “come to Jesus” rock bottom moments in his life (including statutory rape charges that shipwrecked his entire career) until he finally lapsed into legend.
More recently, a well-known stuntman famous for his work on a prank television series—deeply troubled; deeply depressed; searching for purpose and never finding it—killed himself and a passenger after driving his luxury sports car, drunk, at 130 miles per hour off the road into a tree. In the years leading up to his death, it seems like he was also afforded those “come to Jesus” sort of rock bottom moments as well.
I wonder, in my heart of hearts, if these men were ready to “meet God”. The answer is not mine to judge; merely to ponder and posit an educated, scripturally-based “hard-truth” guess: “probably not.”
This is a tough subject to approach, but it’s one that eats at me day by day. I know that I have been at parties with people that will wind up being as well known as any of these men. I have counted them amongst my colleagues, coworkers, and friends. I have, time and time again, attempted to be an ambassador for the Kingdom of God. Time and time again, more than I would ever like to admit, it’s fallen on deaf ears and in many ways I know that I have failed due to my own lifestyle and hypocrisy.
I can’t just ignore it. The industry that I have been lead to is replete with these stories—I recently discovered that a well-known mogul claims to be an atheist, but believes in “divine inspiration” and that it “troubles him.” Anyone who has followed his career, even from a superficial level, could plainly see that his work is anything BUT Godly. There were moments, early on, where it seemed like he was moving towards something truly divine, but upon seeing his latest film, I wanted to vomit at how divorced the soul of his work—and any artist’s work is an expression of the artist’s soul—is from anything good; and it just keeps getting worse.
When I first wrote this entry, it was 2016, a year before the “Me Too” movement would blow the lid off of the rampant degeneracy and abuse infesting the American film industry. How long had it persisted? The more that I learn, the more I realize that it’s been a feature, not a bug, of the major players since well before the introduction of sound to motion pictures. Like any human institution, corruption has been rife and taken root where good men have refused to take a stand.
This pattern is observable all throughout the world—not merely amongst the “big people”. The “big people” are merely symptomatic of a larger problem. There are people who are going to Hell walking amongst us every single day, and I used to be among their number.
I was walking that path. I was ignoring the chances for redemption. I was grieving the Spirit. By the grace of God alone, in 2013, after I completed my first feature-length film—a realization of a long-standing personal dream—God left me bedridden for nearly three months before lifting me up, by His grace alone, and setting me back on course.
Spiritual warfare is a real concern; and, as Christians, we are to be soldiers in the cause. We’re supposed to fight. Why else is our Holy Book rife with images and metaphors for war? The bulk of the Old Testament pertaining to the conquest of Canaan could be viewed as a reflection of the Christian life in that respect, only that our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the forces of darkness of this world. No matter where we are, we are on the battlefield—never safe on this side of Glory to disrobe the spiritual armor we are advised to put on.
The problem I’m faced with is this—I don’t want any part of the industry that I have been called to. The culture surrounding it is corrosive, steeped in hedonism and spiritual darkness. Even still, I feel called to do battle there. I still have friends—very dear friends—who LOVE the culture and are actively chasing those dragons. What do I do?
What are any of us to do? What does it mean to be “in the world, but not of the world?” It’s this nagging splinter in my heart that I grapple with daily as I realize, more and more, that I don’t want to be a part of things the way that they are, but instead want to see them transformed.
I see the “gods” of our age—celebrities—grappling with and reveling in addiction—and wonder why our culture elevates such people to such a lofty status? We are rewarding behavior that we would recoil in horror from if they were to be found in ourselves, our families, our friends—our children—but every movie ticket we pay for, every CD we buy, every time we expend our money to consume something—we are giving tacit approval to the gods of “sex, drugs, and rock ‘n’ roll”.
A few years ago, I met with a friend of mine who has been given a tremendous blessing—he’s “in like Flynn”—rubbing shoulders with really “big people” in his business. You’ve seen their work, you LIKE their work if the trades’ reports on critical scores are accurate, but the life they lead behind-the-scenes reads like the memoirs of a kid who burned out in college—only these aren’t average folks living average burnout stories. These are the “big people,” and the “big people” have the money to buy the “REALLY good” drugs and burnout on a global stage.
I listened, I smiled, I said, “wow, that’s great, your career’s really taking off,” but inside my heart was breaking. This young man, whose heart used to be on fire for God was now gloriously recounting how he orchestrated a drug-fueled bender and sexual liaisons for dozens of A-list celebrities. What was I to say? Anything at all would have been preferable to what seems like the common default: a passive shrug and declaration of “different strokes for different folks.”
I’m no better. Time and time again when I’ve touched that world, even for a moment, I’ve walked away corrupted and in desperate need of repair. Every time though, the Lord has been gracious and fixed me. This is what terrifies me about the fact that I feel called to be a filmmaker—how do I escape such degradation?
My social network includes producers, actors, directors, writers—unknown and known, some you’ve seen on TV—I’m in this place where I’m in total exile and too suspicious of myself to know how to proceed.
I think of one of my personal heroes: Alice Cooper.
Alice Cooper (his real legal name since 1975) used to sell out concerts at stadiums in the 70s. He was the Marilyn Manson of that decade. He personally knew the legends of that time—Hendrix, Joplin, Morrison—and was close friends with Groucho Marx, Peter Sellers, and counted Salvador Dali and John Lennon among his celebrity fans. He also spent the 1970s drunk; rarely eating, and would start each day with a beer and began drinking hard liquor before lunch time. This problem was addressed but recurred until it spiraled into hard drugs in the early 1980s. A few of his albums, all successful, he barely remembers writing or recording. Eventually, his marriage fell apart and he committed to saving it through Christian Counseling and rehab.
Alice now relates a miraculous tale about how he walked out of rehab and felt like a new person—like he was never an alcoholic, and never would be again. It’s not surprising to find out that it was around this time that he committed his life to Christ and became a born-again Christian. Unlike many celebrities, this new religious affiliation stuck like super glue.
Concerned he could no longer be a rock star AND a Christian, he consulted with his pastor who gave him some encouragement: that God had placed him in the Philistine’s camp; that his lifestyle—now clean—spoke infinitely more than any mere proselytizing could in the world of sex, drugs, and rock ‘n’ roll.
Alice Cooper continues to rock and record, and does it in the name of winning ground for the Kingdom of God.
In reviewing Alice’s life, it’s clear that God gave him a lot of second chances, a lot of rock bottom moments where his life was spared (before the final one that saved his soul), and now the man is a faithful witness and one of the last living legends we have among us.
Even if he’s in the minority, I think the few stories like his are the ones that really count. The Kingdom of God is, after all, like a mustard seed. I take a great deal of hope in that.
Thankfully in the years since I originally wrote this, my network has shifted and I’m seeing more of God’s impact on the industry and world around me, but there is still so much to be done.
So long as I’m living my work must continue.
I think back to 2016, and realize that I’ve tread this ground before. I’m again at the end of what I have to offer God. I’m outside the bounds of skills professionally, needing to learn more in order to keep up, I’m outside the bounds socially, now being pushed outside of my comfort zone as I realize the tremendous importance of investing in others. In 2016, when I was similarly at the end of myself, I was convicted to “wait and rest” in God. This time, I know that “waiting and resting” does not preclude action in what God has given. I can be faithful with what is before me, strengthening my skills professionally, socially, emotionally, and spiritually, for the path ahead.
That is all anyone can do. Lean on God and press onward.
Back to the present. That text message on my phone announcing the death of someone from my past life. I offered my condolences how I could, then repeated the mantra, “there but for the grace of God go I,” and went about my day, concerned, but refusing to be interrupted.
God had other plans. By the end of the week, I was called to “go and see, the place where they died,” and revisit those forgotten trails. Those who know the events of that weekend know what happened. I have been convicted of pride and arrogance and will not speak of what took place. I will, however, give my assent that there is indeed much work to be done, and I have the lingering conviction that God called me out of deep darkness to return seven years later with a lantern and a rope, as well as the mission to be salt and light where both are desperately lacking.
For so many years I looked back upon my life with disdain, isolating myself from the industry and culture that I have been called to. I can no longer ignore, however, the truth that Christ did not come to save the righteous, but to call the unrighteous, and while I still sinned, He called to me.
Where Christ-followers fear to tread, darkness takes hold. Complacency is the path to damnation, not for the Christian, but for the world that they forsake.
At this juncture, at least, my eyes are open to that, and I must answer the call set before me.
But before we part, I must ask you: where have you been called, and how will you respond?