By Jody Bennett
I don’t watch horror movies but I do find the concept of the 2019 horror flick Us very intriguing.
In the movie, a family encounters their evil doppelgängers and spends the entire film trying to escape their deadly grasp. These are not just lookalikes but their own evil incarnations.
The movie highlights the little-acknowledged fact that our greatest enemy and the most confronting thing we can encounter is our own worst selves.
It frightens me even to contemplate what my own worst self looks like. My kids have seen glimpses of her when I really lose my cool. Sometimes I see her in the rear view mirror in my car when other drivers are being particularly frustrating. My parents certainly met her during my teens. And I hear her voice in my thoughts often, before I censor myself.
The truth is the depth of anger, callousness, pride and selfishness I see in myself even now does scare me sometimes, but it is nothing to who I used to be or what I would have been if Jesus hadn’t saved me when I was six years old and His Holy Spirit hadn’t been at work refining me ever since. I thank the Lord for that!
I think we all have the potential to be killers and abusers in the right circumstances. Just as none of us really know whether we would eat human flesh if we were in extremis and starving, so none us knows the depths of depravity we would go to without societal restraints.
However, turning to Jesus defeats the power our shadowy evil doppelgänger (sinful nature) has over us and gives us the power to change. And the Bible gives us the instructions to live as our best, most loving selves, following the only human being who never had an evil doppelgänger, Jesus Christ. ●