Ineffable Love eBook
Club: Day 3
Wednesday 15th
April 2020
Welcome to Day 3 of our Good
Omens themed week, with Alex Booer and Emma Hinds – authors of Ineffable
Love: Exploring Christian themes in Good Omens! We’re assuming our readers
will have watched the TV show, but there’s probably something in here for those
of your who haven’t. Join us this week as we share some extracts from the book
and invite you to bring your own thoughts and creative ideas on social media!
Our book, Ineffable
Love – out now on Kindle and eBook from DLT! - is an individual study guide
that explores life and the Christian faith through the lens of the hit TV show,
Good Omens. We explore themes of Justice, Bodies, Power, Belief, Hope,
and Love and Renewal in six chapters, through commentary on the show, Bible
studies, creative suggestions for our readers and our own creative reflections.
It’s full of questions to invite thought and discussion, as well as ideas for
further study. Today’s book club showcases part of Chapter 3!
Chapter 3 of Ineffable
Love is all about Power. We’re living through a crisis where the dynamics
of power in our society – who has it, who hasn’t, who has access to resources,
who doesn’t – is being brought into sharp relief. It feels like everything is
uncertain and up in the air. This close to Easter, our thoughts are also around
the Passion and the crucifixion, death and resurrection of Jesus. This great
drama, this love story, this meditation on the nature of power and what and who
has the last word, is at the centre of our faith.
Jesus’ crucifixion is
depicted – briefly – in the TV show Good Omens.
If you’ve got access to Episode
3 of Good Omens, have a watch from around 2 minutes 48 seconds to 4
minutes 30 seconds. We’ve summarised the scene here:
As Roman soldiers nail
Jesus to a wooden frame, Jesus begs: ‘Father, please, you have to forgive
them. They don’t know what they are doing!’ People look on, grief-stricken.
So do two immortal beings. Gender and shape are optional to angels and demons:
Crowley’s red curls flutter in the breeze as they escape her headdress. Her
expression is grim. Aziraphale stands next to her, flinching as the metal
stakes are hammered in. They talk: Crowley’s had a name change and, it appears,
was the tempter who met Jesus in the desert. Crowley asks what Jesus said to
get himself crucified; Aziraphale informs her that it was, ‘Be kind to each
other.’ Crowley isn’t surprised that such a message would lead to a death
sentence. They stand watch until the skies, and the camera, fade to black.
A question to our
readers: Neil Gaiman
has said that Crowley is presenting as female in this scene, as well as the
scenes in which she’s employed as Warlock’s nanny. Given the importance of
women in the crucifixion and resurrection stories, what do you make of the
demon presenting as a woman and the angel not? If you want to share your
thoughts, tweet us! @IneffablyLovely on Twitter.
We have some thoughts!
There’s a world-building
tidbit in Episode 6 that’s interesting in light of the show’s portrayal of the
crucifixion.
While giving a pep-talk,
Dagon (‘Lord of the Files’) reminds us that the demons of the show are veterans
of a ‘Glorious Revolution’ that they, the rebels, lost. We’re left to assume
that these demons were originally angels; that their Fall transformed their
nature in ways that are apparently physical and probably psychological; that
there’s an occult/ethereal hierarchy, and demons are at the bottom. They were
cast out of Heaven not (or not only) because they’re literally revolting, but
because they fought, lost and were banished.
Crowley is, as far as we
know, a demon of no importance and therefore a relatively junior member of an
exiled group who have been humiliated and forced to work in unsavoury
conditions. He’s not a Duke of Hell or a Prince. He’s just a grunt, and one
that mostly works a long way away from Head Office surrounded by very different
daily influences. His colleagues are pretty awful: they frighten him and don’t
seem to respect him. His good (bad?) standing with Hell is only worth the
success of his latest Temptation, and his life is precarious, being as it is at
the whim of his boss: a terrifying and powerful being who can contact him
anywhere.
Crowley is intruded upon
in his home, in his beloved car, in a deserted cinema. He has no refuge that
offers guaranteed safety or privacy. Like many a human woman in this situation
(Tamar in Genesis 38:1–26; Naomi in Ruth 3:1–15; women generally throughout
much of history), he has to resort to trickery and manipulation if he wants to
exert power amongst his peers. Crowley is a being who exists on the margins
even within the marginalised group he’s part of. On Earth, unlike Aziraphale,
his snake-like eyes mean he doesn’t pass for human either. He doesn’t fit in
Heaven, Earth or Hell.
It’s interesting, then,
when it’s established on-screen that Crowley and Jesus – a man well known for
hanging out with society’s rejects – were acquainted.
In Luke 10:25 – 37, Jesus
is posed a question: ‘Who is my neighbour?’ Jesus’s answer is the
Parable of the Good Samaritan. The neighbour, says Jesus, is the one who had
mercy on the victim of violence who lay powerless at the side of the road.
In Good Omens, as
with the priest and the Levite, the beings whose roles and job titles mean we
expect them to do the saving don't actually care, and our heroes are those who
choose to act out of compassion despite having good reasons not to. In this at
least, Good Omens aligns its narrative message with the teaching of
Jesus. Both Good Omens and the Parable of the Good Samaritan subvert our
expectations of characters based on their positions, suggesting that it’s not
inherent nature that defines our goodness, but our actions (see also Matthew
7:20). When priests and authorities (or angels) are focussed on maintaining
their purity, boundaries and moral superiority, they are the ones we want to
avoid becoming, and an Enemy (Samaritan or demon) who defies expectations and
rejects cultural taboos to act kindly is the one we should emulate.
Crowley seems to grasp
this instinctively. His angelic counterpart does not, even when faced with
evidence to the contrary and an obvious desire to believe otherwise. Aziraphale
insists that there are beings that are inherently good and others that are
inherently evil throughout most of the show, resulting in a heart-wrenching
break-up scene in Episode 3.
It’s clear that we’re
meant to root for Crowley as he reaches across boundaries towards Aziraphale,
when he asks questions founded in compassion, when he argues that humanity,
like the man left by the side of the road, is worth saving. It's said
explicitly in the very beginning: ‘Funny thing, if I did the right thing and
you did the wrong one.’ Funny or not, Crowley has the right of it and it's
Aziraphale who can't see the joke. It takes 6000 years for Aziraphale to let go
of his jingoistic tendencies.
It's therefore not a
massive surprise, it is in fact really rather touching, that Crowley is
presenting as female at the crucifixion. Crowley has always been the one who is
outside of the powerful structures, who is forced into a prescribed role then
(as with Tamar in Genesis 38:24; Naomi in Ruth 1:19–20; and – again – most
women throughout much of history) is mocked and rejected when he exercises his
agency through the only options available.
Crowley knows you can't
trust the institution to have your best interests at heart. Crowley, as with
many women in the gospels, is at the moral heart of the story. He tries to tell
the truth and galvanise others to action and isn't believed. Of course
Crowley’s a woman watching Jesus.
A follow up question to
our readers:
What do you make of
Aziraphale’s summary of Jesus’ message? What does it mean to be kind? How might
kindness (as opposed to ‘niceness’) relate to our theme of power?
Get creative!
Throughout Ineffable
Love, we invite you to explore the show using your own imagination and
creativity.
Episode 3 shows Crowley
and Aziraphale bearing witness to a tiny handful of moments from history. Do
you have any favourite periods in history or Bible stories where you can
imagine these two beings meeting up? Perhaps they’re possessing famous people
at key historical moments? If you’re so inclined, you could make art, write a
short story or poem.
You can find Alex
@alexbooer on Twitter and Instagram, and Emma @emmalouisePH on Twitter and
@elphreads on Instagram.
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