Most people would assume that Fight Club is about as far from the Good News that Jesus Christ came to preach. In some ways that is true, but if you look at the story of this book and the subsequent movie we see something interesting emerge.
If you listen to any of “Tyler Durden’s” rants through out the film you find that he is much like a prophet spouting about how everyone is consumed with materialism and stuff that really doesn’t matter in the end. He is calling people to sacrifice their personal well being to accomplish the greater good of “freeing society from its foolish constructs” and hit the reset button on world economy. He convinces these young men that they need to live in community.
Sounds more like “repent for the kingdom of heaven is at hand” than many would like to admit.
Here is the trick: Fight Club removes God from the gospel and leaves us with a perverted view of justice, community, righteousness, and mission.
If you remove the glory of a loving, just knowing, all powerful God from the center of the story you get nihilism.
Fight Club is trying to save people from themselves but offering nothing in the end. We see this in the slight redemption of the main character portrayed by Edward Norton Jr. as he turns to “Marla” and says “you met me at a very strange time in my life.”
He recognizes, for the first time in the story, that he does not have to live either extreme of allowing his days to be consumed by “which coffee table represents me as a person?” or “you are not a unique and beautiful snowflake.”
He is left with the same essential question at the end of the film. This question, “how do I have purpose in life?”
His first life left him wanting and narcoleptic because it was focused on materialism and intense amounts of travel and instability to gain such materials. The second left him crazy and full of mission and purpose. Both had similar elements, different sides of the same coin.
Both of these lacked transcendence that the Gospel of Jesus Christ offers. Jesus does offer freedom from this world and brings out a mission set in this world with effects that transcend. It both invades this world and renews it from the inner parts to the ever expanding future.
Materialism and mission offered in this film are both short sighted.
Last thought. If I did not believe in Jesus Christ I would probably land on nihilism. Nothing else in this world seems that worth keeping going unless there is something greater.
Jake Tarr
- Legends, or "Why every good story is The Good Story"
- The gospel according to (part) of Lost [Legends]
- The Gospel According to… The Gospel [Legends]
- The Gospel According to Fight Club: Men and the Gospel [Legends]
- The Gospel According to the Zombie Apocalypse (Part 1): Infection [Legends]
- The Gospel According to Comcast [Legends]
- The Gospel According to Indiana Jones
{ 5 comments… read them below or add one }
Amen.
I think Aristotle might like the questions raised in Fight Club more than Jesus! Jake you hit the nail on the head that this story is nothing more than longing philosophy without God in the center. It is amazing how each story changes when the right questions are asked – to the right character.
“You are not your job. You’re not how much money you have in the bank. You’re not the car you drive. You’re not the contents of your wallet. You’re not your f**king khakis.” – Tyler Durden
“Watch out! Be on your guard against all kinds of greed; a man’s life does not consist in the abundance of his possessions.” – Luke 12:15
Nihilist’s Gospel indeed.
I like this a lot. Probably too traumatic to watch again though.
My favorite part of Fight Club is Tyler and Marla standing around, watching the buildings falling down around them at the end. Its such great symbolism of how low you sometimes have to get–your whole world falling apart–for recovery to begin.
All a gun does is focus an explosion in one direction. You have a class of young strong men and women, and they want to give their lives to something. Advertising has these people chasing cars and clothes they don’t need. Generations have been working in jobs they hate, just so they can buy what they don’t really need. -Chapter 19
Right on. I gotcha Chuck. Then…
“I’ve met God across his long walnut desk with his diplomas hanging on the wall behind him, and God asks me, “Why?” Why did I cause so much pain? Didn’t I realize that each of us is a sacred, unique snowflake of special unique specialness? Can’t I see how we’re all manifestations of love? I look at God behind his desk, taking notes on a pad, but God’s got this all wrong. We are not special. We are not crap or trash, either. We just are. We just are, and what happens just happens. And God says, “No, that’s not right.” Yeah. Well. Whatever. You can’t teach God anything. – Chapter 30