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The uninventiveness of lying

Tuesday, February 9th, 2010

I watched “The Invention of Lying” a few months ago and didn’t really know what to make of it at the time. Of course it goes without saying that I’m a huge fan of Ricky Gervais’ comic genius so it was inevitable that I would find the film fairly amusing and clever at times (although not as good as “Ghost Town”)… but the film also clearly had a strong agenda; what to make of its final message?

Now that I’ve had a bit of time to reflect, it seems that the only conclusion I can come to is that the premise of the film is not actually very inventive. Ironic.

So what is the premise? Gervais makes no attempt to hide the fact that the film is based on one main idea: that the stories behind religion in general and the Christian faith in particular are little more than ‘invented’ fairytales. The conclusion is that even though the reality of this world amounts to nothing more than the bare facts of science, people actually need made up stories (aka. ‘lies’) to give them hope, meaning, excitement, purpose and expectation. (Another subtext was that fat guys need this kind of world, that goes beyond the bare facts of science, or else they would have no hope of getting beautiful women – but I guess that was just part of Gervais’ brilliantly self-deprecating humour!).

In the context of the film, the ‘fairytale’ that Gervais’ character makes up which signals the advent of lying is basically a religious system concerning a place in the sky ruled by a man in the sky who can provide a hope beyond death. This is what the people buy into with the result that it creates excitement, gives him power and initially leads to a more pleasant atmosphere, although this eventually breaks down (the implication being that belief in God is not actually beneficial for society or human flourishing).

Ultimately the thing that disturbed me most about the premise of the film was not so much the thinly veiled dig at Christianity; that is not really a novelty anymore. Neither was it the fact that Gervais has typically misrepresented most of the essential facts of Christianity; ideas such as God creating the world already full of evil and suffering and Christianity as a system of works-based salvation are completely alien to the Bible yet this too was to be expected from an atheist lobby that knows only how to caricature and misrepresent Christianity…

The message that disturbed me most was rather the one which emerged out of Gervais’ own secular framework. It was the message that promoted a ‘correct’ picture of reality where there are no (ultimate) happy endings and neither is there any real and ultimate justice, as in these ‘fairy stories’. In order to comfort his dying mother, Gervais’ character invents heaven, giving her the hope of a future, a purpose for her existence and a happy ending. Even though he ‘knows’ that there is no such thing as heaven and that her death will swallow up any meaning her life ever had, he retreats to the use of made up fairytales to help her in her final hour.

There are three problems here for the secularist:

1. First of all, the surgical removal of future hope and ultimate purpose leaves the secularist with only one philosophical system to provide meaning: existentialism (whether this be hedonistic or nihilistic). Such a self-limiting worldview, while not necessarily wrong, is problematic
2. Secondly, this scenario, rather than undermining Christianity, only ends up lending credence to the plausibility of the Christian narrative. For whether they like it or not, secularism is a historical novelty and flies in the face of human experience. This world is a world of fairytale and myth… human culture has always been built on myth-based narratives. And, just so this word, ‘myth’ is not misunderstood here, anyone who has studied literature will tell you that fairytale and myth do not necessarily mean ‘unfactual stories’ but rather they are the depiction of certain realities that transcend what we see before our eyes, but that we can nonetheless sense. In other words, just as science has revealed to us that our eyes often deceive us as to the reality of the physical world (optical illusion, etc), so literature speaks of a similar dimension that is accessible to us on some level, yet not visible. Out of this dimension, every culture and society in human history has produced beautiful and fantastical myths and fairytales and all speak of ultimate happiness and ultimate justice – things which require an ultimate benefactor and an ultimate judge, basically a relationship with an ultimate being. Gervais may have written off this dimension completely, but he finds himself in the position of a numerical minority and a historical novelty. While we are not agreed as to who or what this ultimate being exactly is, humanity in general has always agreed that his hand at work in our world – and indeed in our very minds and hearts – is evident. Now one option is to shrug off this historical witness and just claim that all people before the Enlightenment were needy and ignorant. Despite the historical arrogance of such a position, it is an increasingly difficult one to hold as more people are realising that the only people denying any kind of reality beyond the bare facts of science are essentially fundamentalists and have thrown out decent scholarship in favour of diatribe and ‘religious’ rhetoric. Just note how many reviews of “The God Delusion” by secularists themselves have been dismissive and/or disparaging…
3. Thirdly, while the secularist may claim to have heard this many times before, it by no means lessens the force of this point: such a narrative as portrayal as the ‘correct version of reality’ in the film is simply not existentially satisfying. The biggest criticism (and a fair one at that) that is levelled against Christianity is that of hypocrisy – why do people who speak of love so often fail to be unloving… Behind this question is a fundamental existential concern – why should I follow something that doesn’t work, that doesn’t provide eternal love and unconditional value and ultimate meaning in my life? So why should a similar charge not be levelled at the ‘atheist paradise’? If a world needs to be built on lies in order for it to work, then why should I take it seriously? The fact of the matter is that Gervais’ atheist paradise is based on the idea that people need to be trained to see beyond the bare facts of science – this entails lying. Isn’t this exactly what Christianity teaches? Except that in the case of the Christian message, the solution is not a lie but the truth…

The fundamentalist secular gospel – that there are no ultimate happy endings – might be coherent with the facts of science. But Gervais, in pointing us to a reality beyond the bare facts of science only ends up reinforcing the plausibility of the Christian narrative.

So how does the plausibility of the Christian narrative lead to faith in the Christian God?? And I will close with this.

C.S.Lewis put it best when he wrote that in the incarnation and resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth, “myth became fact”… All the myths and fairytales of human history could only ever have been seen as dim shadows and uncertain estimations of the nature and workings of the ultimate being who must be both benevolent and just. Yet in the person and work of Jesus Christ, the expectations of these myths were finally realised. The cross sees the ultimate dispensation of justice as well as the ultimate bestowal of love. Each person who trusts in this God is guaranteed by the resurrection of Christ that their relationship with the ‘man in the sky’ is assured. How? Because the ‘man in the sky’ became a man of flesh and died to redeem us and the world.

The film ends up being not very inventive at all, since the dreary, unimaginative world of bare facts is put forward as the real one and the world of myth, meaning and purpose as the false one.

Tags: Atheism, Cultural Temperature, Fairytales & Mythology, Films, Hollywood, Provocative Thoughts, Ricky Gervais
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