Incurable Wound

I like to read young adult fiction. As literature goes, it's not demanding, and it lets me get my mind off study and explore new directions. Recently, I read through the His Dark Materials trilogy. You may have run across reviews/comments on that series before, and I can confirm, it does present a view of God and the universe that runs completely contrary to Scripture. More on that another time, probably. However, as I read, I was struck by a beautiful theme in the books that's worth reflecting on: the incurable wound.

Fig. 1, Two Severed Fingers

In the second book, Will, one of the characters, must retrieve the subtle knife. To do so, he must fight for it, and in the course of the fight two of his fingers are cut clean off. In a gut-wrenching and fantastic turn of phrase, the author describes the fingers lying on the floor like a hideous, bloody quotation mark. The former keeper of the knife tells him that this was no accident: every keeper of the knife loses the same two fingers. The wound is necessary to Will's role as keeper.

For the rest of book two, Will tries various methods of stopping the bleeding from his wound, but nothing works, not even supernatural means. The wound continues to bleed profusely as Will's journey continues. He grows weaker and weaker as he bleeds out, and we wonder as we read if he will survive to play his part in the cosmic conflict at the heart of the story. Finally, at his weakest, he encounters a man who has a healing salve. The wound is finally staunched. Will looks up, and recognition sparks: the man is his long-lost father. See excerpt of relevant portions of the story. The excerpt does reveal some of the heretical worldview of the story.

There are several themes at play here: responsibility, power, woundedness, healing, and family/origin. Will did not ask to be the keeper of the knife, but that responsibility fell on him. As keeper, he is endowed with power (the knife has supernatural power), but that power comes with suffering and weakness. For Will to fulfill his purpose, he must suffer an incurable wound. He does not find healing until he unexpectedly meets the father he never knew.
These are beautiful themes and it's a beautiful story, but what struck me one day as I was singing in chapel was how very Christian these themes are. We sang these words:

Thank you for this love, Lord
Thank you for the nail-pierced hands
Washed me in Your cleansing flow
Now all I know
Your forgiveness and embrace!

Nail-pierced hands. A cleansing flow [of blood]. These are unhealed wounds that Jesus Christ bears right now, inextricably related to His task of saving His people. For Christ to fulfill His purpose, He suffered wounds that are still in His body (John 20:27), and He is described in Rev. 5 this way:

And between the throne and the four living creatures and among the elders I saw a Lamb standing, as though it had been slain. ... And they sang a new song, saying,

"Worthy are you to take the scroll and to open its seals,

for you were slain, and by your blood you ransomed people for God

from every tribe and language and people and nation,

and you have made them a kingdom and priests to our God,

and they shall reign on the earth."

Both Jesus and Will must suffer their incurable wounds to fulfill their purposes. It's not something they just have to get through to do what they must; the wounding is what must be done to them​.  I'm struck by that -- Philip Pullman wrote a trilogy of Young Adult fiction books that are about the overthrow of the corrupt Church universal and its weak god, and yet one of his protagonists walks a journey that follows major contours of Jesus Christ's journey.

The similarities go further. In a twist that is so poignant I hate to spoil it, it is revealed that Will is the second Adam of his universe in exactly the representative sense that Jesus Christ is the second Adam of the human race (1 Cor. 15:45; Rom. 5:12-21). As Jesus recapitulated the temptations of Israel in the wilderness, choosing submission where they chose rebellion, so Will and Lyra (the female protagonist) recapitulate the temptation of Adam and Eve as representatives for sentient races throughout the multiverse. The roles of Will and Lyra correspond to the role of Jesus: they are messianic.

Of course, Pullman appears to be conscious of this, and he proceeds to subvert Will and Lyra as messianic figures by having them repeat the sin of Adam and Eve. Lyra literally takes fruit, eats, and shares it with Will. And doing this is the only hope for their universe; the serpent in Eden was actually telling the truth. The universe needed its messiahs to sin. It's a chilling twist for a Christian to read.

I probably should have started with a thesis. It's hard to know where to stop with talking about the theology of His Dark Materials, but I don't have space to talk through it all. Thesis. My thesis is that Jesus-figures show up in fantastic and beautiful ways throughout literature, and that beauty, even when it's subverted, testifies to the truth of Jesus.

Wow. The relationship of truth and beauty -- that's a topic to build a library around, not a blog post! Maybe I can start that direction, at least. Jesus-like characters in literature are beautiful, and their beauty points us toward the real person. The images remind us of the beauty of Jesus Himself.

I want to follow this post up with one about C. S. Lewis's characters who bear incurable wounds. Literature has more to say! But this post is long already. Maybe more later.