Netflix Asks Us to Find God in the Mud of Mudbound

When Ronsel gets a letter from his old girl in Germany—along with a picture of the boy he fathered—he accidentally leaves the picture of the mother and child in Jamie’s truck. Pappy finds it.

That night, the Ku Klux Klan finds Ronsel on the road. The Klansmen beat Ronsel to the point of death, then bring him to a barn, strip him naked and pin him to a wall—perhaps an intentional echo of Christ. They drag Jamie in, too—Pappy demanding that Jamie choose how Ronsel should be “punished.” Should he lose his eyes? His tongue? His testicles? Jamie refuses until he, too, is nearly beaten to death.

The punishment nearly kills Ronsel. Indeed, when we see Ronsel’s body afterward, I thought he was dead.

The next Sunday, Ronsel’s body lying lifeless back home Hap stands before his congregation in that half-finished church. Just stands there. He has no words. No hope to offer. Not then.

We can almost hear his thoughts, though: Where were you, God? How could you bring Ronsel safely home from war, and then allow this?

We Christians have come up with plenty of answers to Hap’s unvoiced questions. Hap maybe had those answers bouncing around his own head. But none of them bring much comfort in those excruciating moments of pain, grief and anger. In the face of agony and suffering, we all stand like Hap does: Silent.

But if we listen closely enough and long enough, we realize that while we may be silent in the face of unimaginable pain, God is not. We can hear him working.

This morning, I came across a LightWorkers.com video of Kay Warren, wife of Saddleback Church founding pastor Rick Warren. In the video, Kay talks about the suicide of her son, Matthew, and the painful recovery that followed.

I’ve always appreciated Kay Warren’s honesty. Sometimes, I think it’s easier to show that stiff upper lip in the face of unimaginable tragedy than be willing to cry. In the video, she doesn’t try to explain or excuse God. She simply talks about how He showed up in the aftermath.

God is not helpless in our ruins, she says. And it’s true.

Mudbound tells us as much. Ronsel doesn’t die, but makes his way back to Germany to meet—and perhaps help raise—his young son. Hap and Florence leave the McAllan farm: We see Hap working and smiling in a place of green bounty, perhaps free at last.

Mudbound doesn’t gives us a clean coda: Complexities abound and some sins go unpunished. But it does offer hope—hope that even after the worst has come, a better day waits for us. We, like Ronsel, can have our worlds torn apart. But God is not helpless in our ruins. And we can find a way to climb back. To rise again.