Mud and Role Models

If applicable, think of the first person who growing up inspired you to lifelong religious living. Maybe a parent or a youth/congregation leader?

How did it feel when you realized this person was flawed? Perhaps deeply so? How did this affect your attitude toward the church you were a part of.

I guess the idea of flawed role models has been on my mind a lot recently, what with last week’s musings on The Boy and the Beast and me rewatching an old favorite, Jeff Nichols’ 2012 film, “Mud.”

In this film, Ellis and his friend, nicknamed “Neckbone,” spend their idle childhoods on the banks of the Mississippi River. One day they encounter a rogue but charming convict who only goes by the name of Mud (played by Matthew McConaughey). He’s got an air of danger to him, but he’s also an idealist. Mud is on the run after killing the man who assaulted his girlfriend, Juniper (played by Reese Witherspoon), and he’s here now to meet up with her so they can run away together.

To a budding romantic like Ellis, who is also watching the marriage of his own parents wither away before his eyes, Mud’s mission is the noblest errand, and he’s only too eager to help him. Ellis sees Mud as the embodiment of everything good and true. He assigns his own future happiness to Mud’s own love life. If things can work out between Mud and Juniper, then maybe love does conquer all things and Ellis has a chance at happiness one day.

It is because Ellis worships Mud that it devastates him when Juniper ultimately chooses not to go with Mud. This fallout occurs when Ellis’ involvement with Mud lands him in trouble with his parents, which itself happens in tandem with Ellis’ own love life falling apart. Ellis does not take this well at all, and he blows up at his former idol, “Everything you told me was a lie!”

It would seem that true love, the kind Ellis wants to believe in, just doesn’t work out. That both Ellis and Mud were fools to believe in something they couldn’t see and that Ellis shouldn’t grow up thinking he might one day find meaningful love.

But accepting that love isn’t a risk-free game allows Ellis to enter the playing field on better footing. Ellis ultimately decides to believe in love not because it is easy, but because he learns that despite its thorns and pitfalls it is ultimately the better way to live. What the movie offers instead is surprisingly hopeful: the vivid possibility that Ellis doesn’t have to be bound by the actions of his parents (whom the movie still paints sympathetically and charitably), his own lack of experience, or even Mud himself.

Mud’s final conversation with Ellis has his idol pronounce to him, “You’re a good man, Ellis … You find a girl half as good as you and you’ll be alright.” If Ellis internalizes this, perhaps it’s because despite Mud’s flaws Ellis sees how Mud’s strong moral code makes him into a better person. After all, Mud rushes Ellis to the hospital after he is bitten by a snake, which ultimately blows his cover and allows the authorities to catch up to him. And herein lies the most essential feature of a role model: genuine care for the person they are mentoring.

The internalizing of principles is an essential part of mature discipleship. People let us down, and so when we base our religious participation–or any aspect of our values–solely on their actions, we inevitably grow up to be untethered. But despite their inevitable shortcomings, we need good role models if nothing else so that the rising generation always feels like they have someone on their team.