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REYNOLDS |
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The Hardy Boys Latest:
The Mystery of Attractive Evil Chums!
by John Mark Reynolds [author,
academic] 9/22/07
The culture is like a motorcycle careening wildly off a cliff on Shore Road!
The culture is lunging at the church like a thug with a drawn knife!
Christians are unconscious and their leaders are slumping to the metaphysical floor!
If I were to write this post in the style of Franklin Dixon or
Carolyn Keene, these would all be worthy sentences. These authors, like
the comic books of my youth, were unafraid to generously endow their
work with that too little used punctuation mark: the exclamation point!
Even seeing it, embitters me toward generations of English composition
teachers who have stripped it from our sentences!
Like a split infinitive in the hands of Gene Roddenberry the
exclamation points of our youth helped us to boldly go from one comic
frame to another or one Hardy Boys chapter to the next! They were
friends butchered by English teachers jealous that they could never
have gotten a date with Ned Nickerson or Callie Shaw!
Contributor
John Mark Reynolds
John
Mark Reynolds is the founder and director of
the Torrey Honors Institute and Associate Professor
of Philosophy at Biola University.His
personal website can be found at www.johnmarkreynolds.com and
his blog can be found at http://scriptoriumdaily.com.
[go to Reynolds index] |
Most future readers of great literature find themselves reading the
Hardy Boys or Nancy Drew at one point in their infant stage of literary
development. I always preferred Drew to Hardy, since Drew’s mysteries
were more complex and the Hardy Boys tended to rely more on machinery
and muscle than brain power.
Both books did lead my brother and me to a life long quest to revive
the use of the word “chum.” We have not yet succeeded, but have made
some progress.
Paul Spears has already ably defended reading such horrendous trash with the help of G.K. Chesterton, so I do not feel compelled to do so.
The books are, however, not great literature and though they
provided me hours of juvenile pleasure, they had some severe stylistic
problems. Even this can be useful since one of their many literary
defects is a good reminder of a particular cultural defect.
Both Nancy Drew and the Hardy Boys can always recognize a “bad
person,” because they have give away physical and behavioral clues
(some of which reflect offensive stereotypes of th time). Let’s take
some descriptions of “bad guys” and fools in one Hardy Boy’s book (The Shore Road Mystery), selected due to its classical references to the Iliad and the Trojan horse:
“a short, stout man named Oscar Smuff, wearing a green suit and Tyrolean hat”
“he smiled ingratiatingly”
“the stilted language and pompous manner of the man impressed neither of the boys”
“gaudy tie clasp”
“squat figure”
“dumpy figure”
“the broad-nosed, bald man wiped his sleeve across his face”
“supercilious smile”
“glaring lividly”
“heavy round faced owner”
“he talked volubly”
“three men lounged”
Most important: villains almost always speak in contractions or the dreaded slang.
The book assumes that bad guys are always pretty easy to spot. They usually have bad guy names to help!
A Quick Warning
Of course, let us not make a different error and assume that certain
physical and social characteristics are not good clues to cause worry
about a person. If a man is extreme in his attire (either very dressed
up or very slovenly), it does say something about him. We are often so
conditioned by modern media’s love of the “anti-hero” that we forget
that in real life most lazy or careless people often become lazy or
careless about friendships.
We should also not forget that people who are actually doing bad
things are bad. This is a controversial statement in our era where only
Nazis can achieve the “bad person” label, but it is true none-the-less.
Generally, if a student or graduate becomes obsessed with their
“right” to use the f-word, to drink, or to flirt with assorted
immoderate behaviors; I am not encouraged about the state of his soul.
These are generalizations and must be treated as such, but
generalizations can still be useful.
Here are some useful generalizations:
Generally, people who watch five hours of television a day are in
real trouble and this trouble will tend to show itself in their
physical and mental characteristics.
Generally, people who are embittered or a constantly negative about authority in their lives are in trouble.
Generally, bad company corrupts good morals.
Hanging out with morally bad people can be good for them, but can
also be bad for you. Most of the time, trying to help a “bad friend”
just sucked me down into their problems.
Of course, general rules can be misapplied in particular cases. The
pharisees judged Jesus by the company he kept, but the Son of God was
not corrupted by His bad company. He was a physician reaching out to
the sick. Still, I have noted that in my own past I believed that I was
being a physician (like Jesus!) when I was just infecting myself with
bad company.
The rule of thumb seems to be: most people who hang out with bad
people become bad. Our culture teaches us to fool ourselves into
thinking we are stronger than we are. If you are given the ministry of
hanging out with Hardy Boys villains, at least remember they are
meaning to engage in a sinful lifestyle and have friends who can
monitor your own behavior who are not part of that social scene.
Assuming, however, that one is not stupid enough to ignore obvious
warning signs of bad character there is a problem that Nancy, Joe, and
Frank never confronted. Many bad guys and gals do not tip off the hero.
They are evil, but only in one area. Otherwise, they seem quite
swell (to use the Hardy vocabulary). As I know all too well from my own
life, a chum can be attractive, but bad.
This is a mystery that no Hardy Boy or Drew girl ever had to face.
But Bob Was Such A Good Guy!
The problem of evil chums is that they are often only noticeably
evil in one area. “Bob is a racist, but he is a swell guy otherwise.”
If Bob is also good looking or “fun,” then the temptation of our
culture is to overlook his bad behavior.
We hope that Bob can compartmentalize his bad ideas and that they
will not infect the rest of his life or us. Most often these
compartments are as useful as the “water tight” compartments on
Titanic. We have forgotten the obvious fact that over time our life
compartments tend to leak.
By putting up with our friends behavior, we also empower that
behavior. The tax cheat is a thief, but we rationalize the stealing as
if the only real thieves rob 7-11 stores.
Sometimes strong minded people can compartmentalize their
sin. That makes it less obviously destructive, but can lead to a
different problem. The ability to compartmentalize parts of life from
the rest is good for those who face severe heart aches in this sinful
world. It is not so good for people to use that “emergency technique”
to enable continued bad behavior.
Do we really want our friends to learn to separate themselves from
their own feelings and experiences so they can go on sinning?
Probably not, but the temptation to avoid making trouble or to avoid
a chief fear of our age, appearing judgmental, is very great. We don’t
want to call a thief a thief, since he otherwise is so honest. We will
not call our friend the adulterer what he is, because he is otherwise
so personable.
The temptation is especially strong if our friend is otherwise
socially acceptable. We can even come to minimize or justify sin, since
“otherwise” our friend is so nice.
Only Hitler, Stalin, or Bull Conner is evil since we have a Hardy
Boys eye for evil. We have missed the message of Jesus about evil and
sowing and reaping.
We are evil chums, but we feel good about ourselves.
Sowing and Reaping
We are not an agricultural society, so most of us don’t understand
the metaphor of sowing and reaping. Good seed is sown and bears good
fruit. Bad seed is sown and bears bad fruit. Jesus uses this process as an image for good works and sin.
Most of things we do in a computer culture are immediate. We push a
key and something happens. As I press the “x” key right now xxxxxxxxxx,
it produced a series of the letter “x.” Much we do in our culture has
immediate feedback.
Seeds do not grow this way. They are hidden in the ground and only come to light over time.
Sadly for us, changes in culture and in persons, work more like seed
sowing (Jesus was wise.) than like hitting a computer key. It takes
time for the evil we do to impact us or for the good we do to begin to
benefit our souls.
I once heard a talk-radio host laugh at Christians since “gay
marriage” had been around for five years and nothing bad had happened
to Massachusetts yet! It is as if he believes that cultural changes
will be understood quickly or simply.
For of course, most people (or cultures) do not just sow one kind of
seed. We sow good and bad seed. Weeds and fruit grow up at the same
time and we are confused about the source of both.
Many of my college students make the same mistake I made at their
age. We reap the results of good seed sown by our parents and even of
some good seed they helped us sow in the more controlled era of young
adulthood. Then we begin to sin and sow bad seed and nothing happens!
Not only do we continue to reap good things, but the bad we do (which
is fun at first) bears little or no bad fruit.
Our parents were wrong, Jesus was wrong, sin is great! By the time
the sin does begin to bear bad fruit (often twenty years down the
road), we have forgotten the actions that marred our soul or began bad
habits. We blame other more immediate things. We may even blame a “good
turn” in our lives . . . since we try to reform and when nothing
happens right away (our seed does not bear “good fruit” immediately),
we give up.
We are like the small children who plant their beans in the classic
experiment only to root them up in disappointment the next day when
“nothing happens.”
Many of us also do enough good that we can tolerate our “little
vices.” They are bitter to the taste, but mingled with enough good
fruit to still be (barely) palatable. We live a life that is less than
what it could be because we keep sowing bad seed.
Nobody this side of Jesus is as perfect as Nancy Drew and nobody is
as bad as a Hardy Boys villain. Because of this, we are tempted to
tolerate our own vice since it is “not so bad.”
This is sad and it can be ruinous. Most of the great big bad things
I have done in my life have come to pass because of small sins I
tolerated. Many of my annoying long term problems are because I will
not allow God to root out my “bad seed” since it does not (on the
whole) seem so bad.
The older I get the less I have tolerance for my own lack of holiness.
The Bottom Line
Sadly, the world does not work like a Hardy Boys book. It is true
that evil eventually reveals itself, often even in the physical
appearance of the person, but this takes time. Meanwhile, the myth that
all bad people are totally bad or that evil will manifest itself
immediately or in obvious ways often keeps us from repenting.
The drunken Christian college student who breaks voluntary vows to
his school and indulges in immoderate behavior can, for a time,
compartmentalize his bad behavior. The man who is cruel to his wife and
uses abusive language toward her may also have many charms. The person
who steals from the grocery story may be otherwise wholly honest, but
the vice is still there.
To end this post the way the Franklin Dixon might end a book:
Joe and Frank wondered if they had escaped the results of their sin,
but had the uncomfortable feeling that their souls were marred. Not
only was this true, but they did not realize that soon they would face
The Mystery of the Final Judgment. ExileStreet
copyright
2007 John Mark Reynolds
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