Mary Maclane 4: Fascination with darkness

Following on from my first,  second and third post about The Story of Mary Maclane by Herself:

Mary Maclane is fascinated by darkness. She's almost ecstatic at the thought of suicide, giving herself up to the dark power of the devil and destruction. Darkness and destruction are alluring, the idea thrills her - and this is the area that she suddenly is uncomfortable with her level of self-disclosure and vulnerability. There's something that she finds difficult to share with others - not like sexual exploits, dismissal of social customs or her opinions about other people. It's this desire that she feels she needs to hide, although throughout the play it's the main place she looks for happiness.

Once again, I see reflections of high school - how attractive darkness can be. It wasn't uncommon for people I knew to be depressed, moody, bleak, withdrawing, even suicidal. There was something exciting, seductive about it. The imagery of moths drawn to a flame - almost unable to resist although it's so destructive. When we were in bleak moods, we didn't necessarily want to be out of them. There's a sense in which it was a rejection of shallowness, superficiality, that ignored the meaningless and pain of life. It felt real to feel these things - so much more deep and honest than drifting along without reflection, superior to getting caught up in mundane life and pretending everything was okay.

Unlike some of the other things that I've written about in Mary Maclane, I don't think that a fascination with darkness can be turned around to be healthy or good. There are very, very few things that I think need to be rejected outright - even the worst things in our world are usually distortions of good things, and there is something that can be affirmed. Evil and darkness as a power seem to lead only to destruction.

A fundamental part of following Jesus is to reject Satan and all evil. It is to choose life - real life, with all its pain, mess and need for forgiveness - rather than death and destruction. It's the choice put again and again through the Bible: 'life and death, blessings and curses' (Deut 30:19); wisdom and life, folly and death (Proverbs 1-9); light and darkness (John).


What I'm not saying is that I reject being honest, or dealing with the reality of how life is, or shallowness and superficiality. I still think those are terrible, and that the church hasn't always had a good history of avoiding those things. But I am saying that you don't need to hold on to destructiveness in order to be real or happy, and you can't follow Jesus and Satan.