For the Love of Villains

I love Star Wars, not only the space setting and the massive conflict of good vs. evil, but because of the great way the series concluded (so far). As it turns out, Luke Skywalker was never the main character, but Annakin Skywalker—Darth Vader. By the end of the series, it seemed it should have all been called “The Redemption of Annakin Skywalker.” Few things in film or in literature are as touching as the redemption of a villain. The hated Darth Vader is saved by the love of his son and is redeemed as Annakin once again—his humanity finally restored.

The old cowboy movies were simpler: good guys vs. bad guys. White-hat cowboys and black-hat villains.  When the greasy and cruel outlaw is gunned down by the Lone Ranger, we cheer. It remains a common theatrical pleasure to see the good vindicated and the wicked vanquished in dramatic style.

Today we tend to doubt the hat colors. Today we know the outlaw lying dead in the old western street had a mother and dreams as well (things the movie neglected to show us). Today we would wonder: perhaps he was abused by his father and psychologically trying to get even through rotten behavior. How could we Christians ever have allowed ourselves the liberty to hate the villains? Didn’t Jesus say we should “love our enemies”? How then can we entertain ourselves by celebrating another human being’s miserable death?

As the villain lies dying in the road, squirming like a snake with a wisp of smoke trailing up from the barrel of his pistol, Mr. Green, the local grocer says, “He had it coming!” Mr Green, are you his judge? If you ask me, that Lone Ranger fella seemed mighty quick to go for his gun—can we see that videotape again? 

The enjoyment of good stories—be it movies or literature—begins with simple characters. The bad guys are bad because the script says so. The good guys are good because we’re simply expected to think of them that way. We like seeing good guys and justice prevail while the wicked suffer the consequences of their sins. The question is: is that real or just the movies?

We’re often told not to “demonize” our opponents. To demonize is to strip them of the complexity of being a human being—lots of good and bad all mixed up together—reducing a human to an unreal character of unified motive. In the case of demonization, the black cowboy hat is put on that person’s head, and that person is now singularly wicked in motive and intention. He has no mother, no heart, no tenderness or goodness whatsoever. While I’ve met some people I would consider relatively wicked, I’ve never met someone who was all bad—completely rotten. 

Reality—unlike Hollywood—reveals that there are no good guys and bad guys, just people. We’re all fallen children of God—all with souls that require the grace and redemption of Jesus Christ We’re all just “people” with differing backgrounds and circumstances, and every heart is a mix of good and bad motives.

Not only does the image of God reside in every one of his children, but God desires every one to be redeemed—to come out of the bad into the good. God wants every villain to have a redemption story, for every Darth Vader to have his encounter with saving love.

We should want this, too. Not that we should be naive, or that we should embrace any ideology proclaiming the inherent goodness of all human beings, but that we should hope for and work for the redemption of every human being who has fallen (as all humanity after Adam is fallen).

Every Darth Vader, every Black Bart, every Osama Bin Laden, Saddham Hussein, Kim Jong Il, Benedict Arnold or Adolf Hitler—all of the people whom we would love to demonize—are not simple villains, but flawed human beings whom God loves and sent his son Jesus to redeem. We, brother and sister Christians, should long for and pray for their redemption and never settle with less.