Mad Max: Fury Road: Looking for Redemption

Looking for Redemption in Mad Max: Fury Road - Literate Theology / KateRaeDavis.com // mad max redemption

Because it’s Easter season, I’m hearing a lot of sermons and seeing a lot of posts about redemption.

Which kind of drives me crazy, because I’m mostly unable to hear what these preachers and authors are trying to tell me. The whole time, I’m just thinking, Redemption, what does that really mean?

Because redemption isn’t really a familiar concept in our world, at least outside of Christian vocabulary. So I need some kind of image or metaphor, something to kind of hold onto in order to understand what this mean

And the only metaphor that comes to mind during those sermons is “redeeming” coupons. Which sends me into a whole thought process on trying to figure out that metaphor: Am I the coupon Jesus is redeeming? Is Jesus the coupon? It’s a terrible analogy, and I’m pretty certain it’s not at all what’s trying to be conveyed.

Defining “to Redeem”

So okay. The dictionary Google might be helpful here: “define to redeem.” I learn that to redeem is:

(1) to compensate for faults or sins. You’ve done something wrong, and redemption is the act of making it better, or covering over some poor behavior. The verb can be used for either the one being saved or for the one doing the saving.

(2) to repossess in exchange for payment. Most of these are financial: paying debts, clearing mortgages, those coupons I can’t get out of my mind. One financial use in this category is marked as ‘archaic,’ meaning it’s no longer in use: to buy the freedom of. To redeem a slave means to buy them so that they are no longer owned. (As an aside, it’s absurd that this use is marked as archaic when there are more slaves now than at any point in history. There are groups that buy slaves to free them, though most organizations use other methods, as giving kidnappers money sustains the demand for people being kidnapped into slavery in the first place.)

(3) to fulfill a promise. Pretty straightforward.

What Does It Matter?

The way we understand the use of “redemption” impacts the way we understand our humanity, the world, and humanity’s place in the world.

If our understanding is primarily about definition 1, covering up our mistakes, it means that we largely identify ourselves with our worst moments. We’re likely to become behavior-oriented, living our lives as a kind of social performance in which we’re trying to “pretend to be good always so that even God will be fooled,” as Kurt Vonnegut put it. This understanding puts Christ between humanity and God — as though God cannot bear to look at us and we must have Christ to “cover over” our disgusting, sinful selves.

If our understanding of redemption is primarily around definition 2, financial metaphors of debt, it has the potential to set us up for a substitutionary atonement model in which God looks at humanity, but looks at us in anger that demands some form of payment and vengeance. Perhaps a better use of this sense of redemption is one in which God throws out the accounting book — the debt is not payed, but simply cleared.

And then there’s the archaic use of this definition, in which a person is enslaved to something (drugs, alcohol, sex, money, power…) and God somehow frees the individual from their enslavement.

Finally, if our understanding is primarily about definition 3, God fulfilling a promise, we risk reducing the divine force of the cosmos to a morality that says “Keep your word.” Not that it’s a bad rule to live by, but to reduce a human being to such a rule would be diminishing — how much more so for the creator of everything.

More Complications

It strikes me that in both theology and life, these definitions often overlap; we often use the word to mean multiple senses at the same time. It gets messy. An example from google: a sinner who is “redeemed by the grace of God.” Is this in the sense of compensating for sins, or of having been freed from the bondage of a destructive way of life? Depends who you ask. Some people it’s one or the other (Google places it in the first category). For many Christians, the answer is: both.

Biblical Redemption

There’s another sense of redemption that we don’t really capture from Google’s dictionary.

In Leviticus, which was a book of law for the tribe of God, the word “redeem” is used often. It carries a sense of “restoring to the proper owner” — whether what’s being restored is land, homes, or slaves.

Let’s say you sell a field. In the year of jubilee, that field would be returned to you under the rules of redemption. The land is returned to its original (and therefore “rightful”) owner. When the land is returned to the original, rightful owner, it is redeemed.

In other words, “selling” in the levitical understanding is more similar to how we think of “leasing” today. You’re paying Honda to use the car as though it’s your own; in some senses, it’s your car, but in another sense it’s still Honda’s car. After the lease is up, the car is redeemed — returned to its original and rightful owner.

This also applied to bodies and labor. If you owed someone a ton of money, or you needed cash fast, you could sell yourself into slavery to cover the debt. But in the year of jubilee, your body and labor would be redeemed — restored to the rightful owner; yourself.

Redemption on the Fury Road

Furiosa’s (and Our) Understanding

Mad Max: Fury Road provides a really helpful narrative of how to understand biblical redemption. Oh, and here’s your SPOILER ALERT.

When Max asks Furiosa what she’s looking for, she replies: Redemption.

It’s unclear precisely what Furiosa means in her reply. Redemption is distinct from the hope that the wives seek…but we don’t know much else.

My guess is that she means it in one of the modern senses of the word. It’s safe to say that she’s “buying” (in a metaphorical sense) the freedom of the wives, and that by getting them to the Green Place she’ll be fulfilling this promise to them.

Something in Furiosa’s tone — the pained look into the distance, the despair — leads me to think that she’s relying heavily on that first definition, that she’s trying to address some wrongdoing in her own dark past. (I’ve read an interpretation that, because she’s driven to the Green Place “many times,” that she had previously kidnapped girls, maybe even the wives, to help Immortan Joe in his quest for a healthy heir.) In this sense, she is saving herself, redeeming her own life narrative; she is at once savior and saved.

Max’s (Biblical) Understanding

It is Max who introduces a levitical sense of redemption. He chases onto the salt flat to turn them around (we might say to call them to repent, if we wanted to be super technical about it).

A hundred and sixty days’ ride that way…there’s nothing but salt. At least that way [going back] you know we might be able to…together…come across some kind of redemption.

From a man of few words, in a script of few words, it strikes me that one was included here: together.

With that one word, Max turns Furiosa’s understanding of redemption to a wider narrative. He helps her look beyond her own wrong-doings to see the wider world, the entire system of oppression, of which her actions were only a small part.

With that one word, we-the-audience are able to see that what needs redeeming is not only the individual of Furiosa. What needs redeeming is not even a collection of individuals of the wives. What needs redeeming is the entire system, the whole world.

In this dystopia, humanity as a whole has become enslaved under corrupted power systems, enslaved to the hoarding of resources, the mentality of scarcity, the dehumanization of women and of outsiders. Everything needs to be redeemed, returned to its rightful owners — the water needs to be restored to the land and the people, especially to “the wretched.” The wives’ bodies need to be redeemed — we can recall the prophetic cry of Immortan Joe’s wife, “They are not your property!” Furiosa’s agency and Nux’s life must be redeemed, no longer be on behalf of a select few but for the good of all. Max’s body and blood need to be redeemed, no longer exploited as a dehumanized resource.

This is the levitical, biblical sense of redemption, requiring the participation of all for the restoration of all. The redemption is bigger than any one person, bigger than any personal salvation. It is the salvation of the whole world.

As the war boy Nux says, that “feels like hope.” And it sounds like good news.


What do you see enslaving humanity in the Mad Max world? What do you see enslaving humanity in our world? What needs to be redeemed?

Comment with your thoughts and responses below!

This post is part of a series on the theology of Mad Max: Fury Road. Find the rest of the series here.

Stay spiritually connected and culturally current with latest posts in your inbox, once each week.

A Self in Two Sizes

reflections on Sarah Goodreau's illustration "a mythical babe" and what it says about selves - Literate Theology / KateRaeDavis.com

Sarah Goodreau is an illustrator I really enjoy, and recently she had a piece that I couldn’t not share with you. It’s called “A Mythical Babe.”

some thoughts on Goodreau's "mythical babe" on Literate Theology / KateRaeDavis.com
“A Mythical Babe,” illustration by Sarah Goodreau, http://sarahgoodreau.com/

The color palette is a thing of dreams, somehow soft and sleepy. But the shapes are all movement — hair, wings, tail, arm — this is a babe in action.

What exactly is she? There’s something sphinx-like, something dragon-esque, definitely feminine. Her expression is hard to read, but the hand seems to be waving in a friendly way — or is it raised to keep us away?

But what I love most about this work is the freedom to imagine her as any range of sizes all at the same time. Because the scenery is filled with shapes that conjure connotations rather than strictly depicting a defined setting, she can be large or small.

In one view, I see her as larger than the Great Sphinx. She borders on being called a mythical beast, but for her obvious femininity. She towers over trees in the bottom half of the image. Bulbous clouds seem minuscule compared to her girth. I imagine her wings cause hurricanes and her tail has the power to protect against enemies and to take out small villages in one swoop. She is fierce, commanding, unstoppable.

And then I shift my gaze, and suddenly she’s itty bitty. The trees dwindle into succulents, or even smaller — mitochondria. Individual drops of water mist hover in the background. Her wings are as fragile as a dragonfly’s, her tail wraps around her to try to preserve a bit of warmth. She can hide so thoroughly her predator will believe she vanished.

I think what I love about this double-vision is that I have both those mythical babes inside my own self.

I have the fierce and expansive woman who can control a room and a situation. And I also (sometimes at the very same time) have the ability to make myself small enough to evade what pursues me. When I need to. When being seen is unsafe.

Do you identify more with the creature that towers and must be addressed, or the creature that can evade and hide?

What does the image conjure for you?

And seriously, go check out Sarah Goodreau’s site. She has lots of beautiful work that play with fantastical/mythical themes.

Stay spiritually connected and culturally current with latest posts in your inbox, once each week.

Prayer for Life & Humanity in A Tree Grows in Brooklyn

A prayer for full humanity in "A Tree Grows in Brooklyn" - read in Literate Theology / KateRaeDavis.com

Prayer

This prayer is a quiet and quick murmur of desperation upon learning of the start of war, uttered by the protagonist Francie Nolan in Betty Smith’s A Tree Grows in Brooklyn:

“Dear God,” she prayed, “let me be something every minute of every hour of my life. Let me be gay; let me be sad. Let me be cold; let me be warm. Let me be hungry . . . have too much to eat. Let me be ragged or well dressed. Let me be sincere–be deceitful. Let me be truthful; let me be a liar. Let me be honorable and let me sin. Only let me something every blessed minute. And when I sleep, let me dream all the time so that not one little piece of living is ever lost.”

It’s a prayer for attentiveness, for awareness, for full embodiment. An honest prayer to be fully alive.

Fully Human

We Christians talk about the two natures of Christ; how Christ was “fully God and fully human” at the same time. And I think we often take the humanity for granted; he had a body, and that was enough to call him human. But I wonder if full humanity is something to attain, like wisdom and mindfulness.

I wonder if part of what Francie is praying for here is to become more fully human by being attentive to every moment of embodied life.

Which is what makes it a Christian prayer. Not because it starts with “Dear God,” (which prayer from any religion would do in translation). It’s a Christian prayer because she prays with a foundation in the belief of the importance of incarnation — the incarnation of her own self. Because God made flesh and named it good, and God chose to take on flesh and be embodied with us.

Prayer from "A Tree Grows in Brooklyn" - read more about it on Literate Theology / KateRaeDavis.com


For discussion: Have you ever had moments that gave you a similar desire for life? What was it?

Stay spiritually connected and culturally current with latest posts in your inbox, once each week.

Mad Max: Fury Road: On the Blood, Breath, & Name

Max and Furiosa as an image of Christ and the Church - read on Literate Theology / KateRaeDavis.com

If you haven’t yet seen Mad Max: Fury Road — what are you waiting for?! Cancel your evening plans. Oh, and also, here’s your SPOILER ALERT. The scene I’ll be discussing is near the end of the film.

This post is part of a series on the theology of Mad Max: Fury Road. Find the rest of the series here.


The battle is over, the way home to the Citadel is clear, and Furiosa is dying. Max is over her, his face full of concern, attempting to diagnose and discern what she needs.

Jurisic, one of the Many Mothers, is able to tell Max what is happening. “She’s pumping air into her chest cavity. She’s collapsing her lungs one breath at a time.” Max apologizes as he stabs between her ribs to release the pressure. Jurisic again: “She’s exsanguinated. Drained all the blood.” And Max apologizes again as he connects the, as Nux called him, into a Blood Bag. And he tells her, for the first time, “Max. My name is Max.”

(If you want to watch the scene, I found it online: Max Saves Furiosa.)

I first watched this unfold in a packed, emotionally exhausted theatre as tears flooded down my face. What is it about this scene that is so impactful? And whatever that truth is, the emotional response indicates to me that it must be holding something of the divine —  what is this scene teaching us, theologically?

Cruelty & Kindness

A forced act carries an entirely different meaning than the same act freely chosen.

Early in the film, the War Boys of the Citadel force Max to become a living blood bag in a dehumanizing show of cruelty and power.

Here near the end, though, Max willingly and urgently attaches his blood stream to hers.  The same tube the empire had forced into his arm is now the very object that helps Max revive Furiosa’s life. What the empire had used for evil is now being used for good. It’s a redemptive act.

Which helps highlight, for me, how radical and subversive and grace-ful Jesus was in going to the cross. It was both moments at once. It should have been dehumanizing, and yet he did it in a way that was fully human, never losing (I like to think) his own sense of dignity and freedom.

Jesus has all the kindness and grace of Max-saving-Furiosa under the cruel circumstances of Max-saving-Nux.

An Image of Christ & the Church

The symbols at play in this scene are breath, blood, name.

Each, on its own, has an important history in the Judeo-Christian tradition. And the three are brought together in the one who breathes Spirit into and onto the Church, the one who spills blood for the church, the one named God With Us.

And then I thought that perhaps this scene could read as a sort of image or parable. In parable form, Furiosa might represent the corporate people of God, the Church. Max represents Christ. Jurisic, the Spirit.

To add some nuance: I am NOT saying that the person of Max has a one-to-one correlation to the person of Jesus. Rather, I’m saying that this relationship in this one moment can offer us a way to emotionally experience and understand that relationship in all time. It’s similar to the way that the hood-ornament moment offers an image of the crucifixion moment. I’m saying that when we have moments in which we can’t remember why Jesus’s spilled blood is good news or what it meant for Christ to breathe on us or to offer his blood for us, that the emotions we experience in this scene can help remind us, because they’re pointing to that moment.

I’m also not saying that any of this symbolism is intended by George Miller or anyone else involved in the making of Mad Max: Fury Road. It’s possible to be true to the story and for the Spirit to be at work within our human work of creating (indeed, I don’t know if there is any other way to create), as I get into in the Foundations series.

Ok. With that clarified. Here’s a reading of the “Max Saves Furiosa” scene in parable form (which is notably in the reverse of the Jesus story):

Christ is concerned for the Church. He is with her, near her, hovering over her. But to act, he seems to rely on the Spirit to tell him what the Church needs.

When the Spirit tells him that the Church needs air/wind/breath/spirit (in Hebrew and Greek, these are all conveyed with a singular word), Christ acts decisively so that the Church has the ability to receive it. (For Max, this looks like pushing a knife into her ribcage so she is able to receive air into lungs; in John 20, Christ breathes on his followers as he tells them to receive the Holy Spirit.)

Next the Spirit tells Christ that the Church is drained, that she has no life/blood within her. So Christ offers his blood. (Furiosa receives this through a tube; the Church receives it through Eucharist/Communion/Lord’s Supper.)

Finally, Christ reveals his identity. (For Max, this occurs through giving his name. For Christ, it occurs in his naming at birth and is shown in fulfillment in the resurrection.)

On the Name

A moment on Max’s name. Sometimes Max is short for Maximillian, which means “greatest.”

I like to think that this Max’s name is short for Maxwell, which means “great spring,” as in a life-giving spring of fresh water.

Which reminds me of that moment when Jesus talks with a woman at a well and refers to himself as living water.

Not to say that Max is fully the same as Jesus. But in this moment, this heightens the imagery that Max-as-life-source-for-Furiosa provide in an analogy of Jesus-as-life-source-for-the-Church (and also resolves the question: “Why tell her his name now?”).

Ascension

Jump to the very last moments of the film when Furiosa, the wives, and as many of the wretched as they can fit are crowded onto the ascending platform. Furiosa looks around and sees Max disappearing into the crowd, leaving her and the wives to do the work of re-structuring the systems of the Citadel into more sustainable ones, re-ordering the culture into one that restores the human dignity of the wretched.

It’s a reverse of how we understand ascension. In Christian tradition, Jesus is lifted into the heavens and leaves the disciples staring after him into the clouds.

Here (if we continue the metaphor), Jesus looks up as the Church ascends into the center of power structures in order to dismantle.

In John’s account, Jesus says that his followers will do greater things than he has done. I’ve never really understood what that meant, but I like the image offered in this last moment of Mad Max. Max gives breath and blood to Furiosa so that she can change the systems and redeem the Citadel. Jesus gives breath and blood to the Church so we can do likewise in our world.


This post is part of a series on the theology of Mad Max: Fury Road. Find the rest of the series here.

For discussion: Does reading this scene as an image of Christ and the Church change your understanding of Christ? the Church? their relationship? If so, how? Does it help or hinder?