The French Revolution
[Spoiler alert! Don’t read unless you’ve already seen the episode!)
The second half of the season opener of The Walking Dead was one of the best episodes yet, but you don’t even have to be a fan of the show to appreciate the spiritual undertones of the episode.
Actually, the spiritual lesson was so overt, it can’t even be accurately described as an undertone.
Here’s how it started. In Alexandria, walkers have surrounded every building ominously shuffling throughout the town. The residents are hovering, waiting, knowing they’ll have to leave the confines of their various buildings and fight the thousands of undead or die eventually. Two people are in an old church, looking for weapons, when one of the characters sees a Biblical passage:
Faith without works is dead: James 2:26
But the whole verse is:
“As the body without the spirit is dead, so faith without works is dead.”
See what they did there?
In a show about zombies, the producers compared people who refuse to get out there and work to “bodies without the spirit.”
That leads us to a moment in the church when a priest announces, “We’ve been praying that God will save our town. Our prayers have been answered because God has given us the courage to save it ourselves.”
By this point, the main protagonist Rick, overcome with grief over the death of loved ones (and a very unfortunate incident that blinded his son), is sick of running from the evil that lurks outside the door. He grabs his hatchet, goes out into the street, and begins hacking the walkers. Gradually, all of the hiding people are inspired to put their faith to the test. Even though they are scarily outnumbered, they venture out into the dark, cold world and fight.
Yes, even the cowardly character Eugene — who’s offered the chance to stay back — grabs a hatchet. “No one,” he says, “gets to clock out today.”
The episode played out like a Biblical parable – pray to God, trust that He hears you, act in faith, and expect deliverance. Of course, when all of the people were surrounded by the undead, the situation looked bleak.
Until…. as Entertainment Weekly reports:
Daryl shoots an RPG, which, thanks to the oil, ignites the surface of the water in town. The small lake becomes a sea of flames, drawing the walkers attention toward the place of their destruction. Many of them willingly shamble toward the fire and their underwater (second) deaths, but the group fighting in the roads of the town do not simply stand by. Their passions, their anger, their desire to protect their home has been similarly ignited, and they slash their way through every walker they can find.
I guess deliverance can come from God in the form of an RPG, after all.
The tense, epic episode not only was great television, it was a great reminder.
If you don’t have faith — and act on it — you’ll turn into a zombie.
Or something like that.
Order my next three books on Amazon:
Read more on the Patheos Faith and Family Channel, follow Nancy on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram!
Ad-Free & Subscriber Log-In