OCD, Stephen King’s IT, and Facing Our Fear

Until Pennywise appeared on the screen, my anxiety was heightened. I was afraid of what I couldn’t see. But once the monster appeared, in what I came to find was really just a creature feature, I began to slowly calm down. I could handle this. Then I began to settle in to the story. It was about a group of misfit kids, plagued by evils in their homes and by the evil teenage bullies surrounding them, struggling with the changes of puberty. There was even a kid with hypochondria. (All hypochondriacs are my people, so I was definitely cheering him on as he stepped into the filthy water in a cave to search for his kidnapped friend, even as he groused endlessly and anxiously about the diseases teeming in the deep.) These kids didn’t really have adults in their lives to care for them and protect them. But they had one another; they had a fierce bond of protectiveness and self-sacrifice as they began to each encounter their darkest fears.

As their fears became visible and palpable and were embodied in Pennywise the clown, I reflected on how even going to the film was facing my own fear. As the kids battled evil, I found myself inwardly cheering for them. The human heart has a longing for justice, but this world is so full of evil and brokenness and sadness. We live in a world where the power abusers–the Trumps, O’Reillys, and Weinsteins–rarely get their comeuppance, while their victims often pay the price. We so rarely get to see evil soundly defeated, so seeing a ragtag pack of underdog kids attacking the evil monster with vigor and overcoming was therapeutic. And yet, the film allowed some of the horrible effects of evil to remain. Not all consequences of evil’s presence in the world can be erased. We live in the now and the not yet.

Contending with Evil in the Real World

Pennywise may or may not be real. There really are diseases, child abduction, sexual abuse, failure, and many other evils in this world. But in the minds of the children, Pennywise embodies them all. Maybe he is real; maybe he is in their minds, but the reality of evil remains. And if we are honest about our own experience of evil, it feels otherworldly and huge. We have that sense of the hugeness of evil as children, in our fears of monsters hiding in our rooms, but even as adults, there are times when evil feels so big and so powerful and supernatural, it seems impossible to be defeated. Simultaneously, it seems like no one is on the side of the good, except maybe a few trusted friends. In a world where we feel alone, this film encouraged me to dare to fight evil, even if there are few to stand beside me and even if the results don’t fix everything. The fight still matters. Paul put it this way,

But you, man of God, flee from all this, and pursue righteousness, godliness, faith, love, endurance and gentleness. Fight the good fight of the faith. Take hold of the eternal life to which you were called when you made your good confession in the presence of many witnesses. In the sight of God, who gives life to everything, and of Christ Jesus, who while testifying before Pontius Pilate made the good confession, I charge you to keep this command without spot or blame until the appearing of our Lord Jesus Christ, which God will bring about in his own time–God, the blessed and only Ruler, the King of kings and Lord of lords, who alone is immortal and who lives in unapproachable light, whom no one has seen or can see. To him be honor and might forever. Amen.

–1 Timothy 6:11-16 NIV

If horror reminds me of the transcendence of evil, it also reminds me of the transcendence of love. It reminds me that Jesus entered willingly into the full onslaught of the devil’s evil and all the things we fear–and in the fight won the victory over the devil for us all. It reminds me that the Holy Spirit stands beside me like the friends in the film, refusing to abandon me in the fight. It reminds me that one day God the King will remove the blot of evil from this earth and remake it anew. Evil is strong and ugly and formidable, but it will not have the upper hand forever. God will defeat it forever one day.

Horror and the experience of fear have lessons to teach us. For some of us, those lessons are difficult to access. It is hard to face our fears–whether imaginary or real. But facing them, like the children do in It, releases us from their power. And doing so frees us to take on the battle on behalf of those who have even greater needs than our own.

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