Growing up, I always believed evil existed. With a Southern Baptist upbringing in the buckle of the Bible belt, this was never in question.
Like many children across time, place and creed, there were also pressing concerns about the undead, the monstrous, and all the various horrors capable of making an ambush point from a closet or under a bed. The fictional evils faded in the growing light of age. Yet, looking back, it seems the things that go bump in the night simply changed their shadowy forms.
Much Christian conversation across the theological spectrum lacks a theology of evil, but Robert Eggers’ film “Nosferatu” offers a surprising reorientation.
Theologically conservative views on personal piety and the human need for reassurance often shape a vision of evil that feels distant—more like a monster legend than a real threat. Sure, we’re fallen, but only those “others” are capable of serious evil.
For us mortals, “resist the devil and he will flee from you” is reduced to little more than flashing a crucifix talisman and crossing the road to keep our personal slates clean. But what if we must confront evil as an empty, unsatisfiable maw instead?
One of the most chilling moments of “Nosferatu” occurs when the heroine refers to the beast as a villain. Perhaps pushing back against the cliche ways we use that word, Count Orlok responds, “I am an appetite, nothing more.”
There is little agreement on the origin of the word “nosferatu”, with various accounts looking to Romanian, Latin, and Greek for words meaning “vampire”, “undead”, “not breathing”, “disease bearer”, and “the offensive one”. The wide-ranging etymology fits both the monster of the film and the evil of our reality.
In “Nosferatu,” the vampire doesn’t drink blood to live in the direct way we might enjoy a scone to fuel our morning. Nosferatu takes life, writ large.
He is the blood-soaked Orlok. But he is also a strangling shadow, mobs of gnawing rats, and a consuming plague killing far more people than the list of the bitten.
Nosferatu’s existence, evil’s existence, is to take and remain empty.
First Peter 5 tells us, “Your enemy the devil prowls around like a roaring lion looking for someone to devour.” What if we took this seriously and surveyed the world through this lens?
Consider the never-ending conveyer of God’s image-bearers, ground under by greed, poverty, violence and prejudice. Look to those (sometimes friends and family, unfortunately) who have succumbed to hardline, hateful or conspiratorial ideologies.
Fanaticism scoffs at thoughtfulness and demands to drag its target to the very end, using it to destroy others. Underneath it all lurks a bottomless need to devour, never satisfied by enough devotion to suffering.
This is why those borne away to evil can mistake destructive impulses for love. Both require sacrifice, but only love gives.
If we have avoided being caught in the downward spiral, we can still miss how our action or inaction unleashes Nosferatu on others, sometimes even to our Faustian benefit. We avoid personal sins and assure ourselves that we’re not killing anyone, but our individualized morality is as hapless in the face of true evil as a bag of cliche vampire-hunting tools when Count Orlok arrives.
In different ways, more progressive theologies, which it’s important to note have predominantly occurred in majority white contexts, often feel inadequate to the task at hand. The only greater comfort than distancing evil “over there” is making evil immaterial.
Just as individualistic morality can’t confront the breadth of infernal hunger, a theology that tries to dismiss the notion of evil as antiquated or limits it to systems cannot adequately name the monster. Nor can it deal with the ramifications of individuals choosing evil.
If our reaction to the evils of turbulent times is limited to shock, we would do well to learn from traditions and communities that never lost sight of the shadow.
Evil’s supernatural persistence in the face of modernity is central to both “Nosferatu” and its inspiration, Bram Stoker’s “Dracula.” Willem Dafoe’s Albin Eberhart von Franz, the Van Helsing analog of “Nosferatu,” memorably confronts an incredulous character by declaring, “We are not so enlightened as we are blinded by the gaseous light of science. I have wrestled with the Devil as Jacob wrestled the Angel in Penuel, and I tell you that if we are to tame darkness, we must first face that it exists!”
The Epistle to the Ephesians commands us to “have nothing to do with the fruitless deeds of darkness, but rather expose them.” To fulfill our task and live out Christ’s goodness, we must be able to name evil and see its workings as a hunger. Only then will it have no shelter in the oncoming dawn.
- About the Author
- Latest Posts
Youth minister in Madison, Mississippi. Geoff double majored in religious studies and political science at the University of Alabama before completing an MDiv at Baylor University’s George W. Truett Theological Seminary.
