The fourth reason detective mysteries are appealing as stories is related to the foundational truth that human existence is meaningless apart from community. We do not thrive nor are we fully content as solitary creatures, because as the Creator said in the beginning, it is not good to be alone (Genesis 2:18). Extended solitary confinement can drive a person mad, and even hermits usually build their cells near one another.

            And because we are finite and fallen creatures, as soon as community is established a system of some sort is necessary if justice is to be maintained. It may be a simple system that grows up informally, but something systematic is required if the community is not to descend into some sort of libertarian anarchy. This is the wisdom in Jesus’ instructions to his followers about how to proceed if someone sins against us (Matthew 18:15-20) and when churches fail to take his words seriously the result is rarely admirable.

            And because we live in a broken world, corruption can penetrate our systems, within the church or without, and when it does all of life is disrupted and perverted. Sadly, corruption is a constant threat, from cities where the police accept bribes to look the other way to the incestuous relationship between Washington and Wall Street. Corruption undercuts the pursuit of justice, skewers the hope of victims, and allows the powerful to gain at the expense of the powerless.

            Detective stories bring this complex interrelationship of community, system, justice, and corruption into focus so that as we read life seems to be clarified. We love detectives who are incorruptible, and see them as heroic. We wonder about the detective who takes shortcuts for the greater good, and cheer if their breaking the rules results in the criminal being apprehended. And we feel a weight when the story is of corruption all through the system, so that justice is always thwarted and the forces of law instead make a bargain with the forces of crime to keep the evil within “acceptable” limits. This is why debates about a nation’s judicial system become so heated—even if we are not dragged into the justice system personally it matters to us that the system in our community is not corrupted.

            And so detective stories are appealing because they allow us to live in a fictional world where these realities are explored, for blessing and for curse. We follow the cases of incorruptible detectives and feel hopeful, or the cases of corrupt detectives and wish they would be caught and exposed. Human community, systems of law and order, and the diabolical threat of corruption are constantly with us, and both justice and hope lie in the balance.

Lord Peter & Father Brown

            If you have not read Dorothy Sayers’s (1893-1957) Lord Peter Wimsey mysteries or G. K. Chesterton’s (1874-1936) Father Brown mysteries, please do so. I think it is correct to say that these two Christian authors not only wrote ripping good stories, they revealed how glorious the detective genre could be.

            Lord Peter is a stereotypical British aristocrat, with a trusty butler, and time on his hands because his money, which is considerable, was inherited. So he solves mysteries, and because of his moral commitments and lack of need, is incorruptible in his pursuit of justice. An interesting detail for Christians is that though Lord Peter is not a believer, another character in the stories is, and the interplay between the two is fascinating.

            Father Brown is a Catholic priest, and is a good detective because he cares only for truth and has spent so many hours hearing confession that he has no illusions about human nature. He can see past and through deception and lies, and notices ordinary details that more distracted people all miss. When he confronts the criminal at the end of the story it is not with the standard, “You are under arrest,” but with “I am ready to hear your confession.”

            Both Sayers and Chesterton clearly saw how detective stories fit into the deeper biblical story of reality, and though neither series are religious in the sense of being preachy, both take law, guilt, justice, mercy and forgiveness with the seriousness they deserve. The fact that neither detective is corruptible makes the stories all the more satisfying. I’d like both Lord Peter and Father Brown to be at work in my community.

            Father Brown (51 short stories published in various editions).

            Lord Peter (11 novels plus 6 short story collections published in various editions).

The Protectors

            The Danish national police force includes the P.E.T (Politiets Efterretningstjeneste) division, whose job is similar to that of the U.S. Secret Service, providing protection to politicians, public figures, royalty, and visiting diplomats. The series follows a group of new recruits to the service, so we get a glimpse of the more mundane as well as the exciting parts of the job. The individuals on the squad have personal lives and concerns, and how these interact with their demanding and dangerous work is a subtext woven into the plot.

            In one sense The Protectors is not a detective series, yet fulfilling the tasks assigned to them usually involves needing to anticipate dangers and unravel threats to the persons they must keep safe. Their work carries them to the edge between criminal violence and social justice, and hidden clues and mysterious criminals always lurk. And they are tasked with preventing terrorist attacks, tracking dangerous persons, and finding stalkers.

            One of the delights of The Protectors is the insight it allows into Danish life and society. Filmed in Copenhagen, each episode provides lovely vistas of Danish countryside or the scenic streets, architecture, interiors, and neighborhoods of Copenhagen. Following the members of the squad also allows insight into Danish culture, mores, and daily life.

            I enjoyed this series, appreciated the character development as the episodes progressed through each season, and came to understand how even working as a bodyguard can demand choices that are rife with ethical concerns, and sometimes moral confusion. The Protectors are often misunderstood, criticized when things go badly by powerful figures in politics and the media, and ignored when everything goes well. Yet the squad remains committed to its work, and does its best even when needing to protect unsavory characters. In a fallen world, police like the P.E.T. will always be necessary, and one can only hope that they act with the integrity the officers in The Protectors sought to nurture and display.

            The Protectors (2 seasons, 10 episodes each, 1 hour each episode, Danish with subtitles, available on DVD or streaming)

Spiral

            The Protectors is set in Denmark and follows a squad of limited officers who desire to live with integrity, while Spiral takes us to France where nearly everyone depicted in the series seems willing, if not eager, to be corrupted to get ahead. Spiral is delightful for the opportunity it provides to see into French life, society and culture and the lovely setting of Paris. The corruption comes not because they are French, but because they are fallen, and to mark the contrast, one figure in the series seeks justice even at personal cost.

            The French system of justice is quite different from what I am used to, with magistrates empowered to investigate crimes and determine whether the persons involved should be brought to trial. The series follows one such magistrate and the police working under his direction depicting how he must weave his way through a labyrinth of political vested interests and legal corruption. Two young attorneys, trying to get their careers launched in a crowded and competitive field, discover the temptation to bend the law is not merely present but is usually far more lucrative than just doing the job of a lawyer.

            The depiction of corruption is never glorified, and though characters may claim things are relative, the stories reveal that is not the case. Choices have consequences, justice perverted is never victimless, and the individual who chooses corruption may gain wealth and even prestige but loses their soul.

            Each series of episodes tends to follow one major crime, as it is investigated and brought to justice, with subplots of other smaller cases woven into the plots. Over time we watch as temptation, disappointment, and choices make a difference, setting up ripples that work their way out to poison the system upon which the community depends. This is a rather dark and gritty series, one that shows not just the horror of crime, but the tragedy that is corruption.

            Spiral (5 seasons, 8-12 episodes each, 1 hour each episode, on DVD and some streaming, French with subtitles)

Peaky Blinders

            A production of BBC Two, Peaky Blinders tells the story of a family gang that ruled the streets of Birmingham, England in 1919. World War I has just ended, conditions for working men in Birmingham are grim, Communist agitators are seeking to organize resistance, industrial pollution is unrestricted, and despair and alcoholism are rampant. The Peaky Blinders, a family of gangsters are named for their caps, into the peaks of which they have sewed straight razors, so in a street fight they can be slashed across an opponent’s eyes. The neighborhoods that the gang rules are bereft of law, the police either bought off or too afraid to get involved. Then the brutal but effective Chief Inspector Chester Campbell (played by Sam Neill), is brought in from Belfast by Winston Churchill to clean up the mess, and he soon comes up against the head of the Peaky Blinders, the clever and ambitious gangster Tommy Shelby (played by Cillian Murphy).

            In this series we go one step further and watch what life is like when corruption has perverted the system, so that the street gang and the police are more alike than not. Both take life when it suits them (though for different reasons), make compromises to get ahead, and try to find a way to further their own ends even if integrity is lost in the process.

            In some neighborhoods today residents fear a squad of police arriving on their street even more than they do the gangs that rule the street when the police are absent. Peaky Blinders gives some hint of what that must be like, and it is not as it should be. Chief Inspector Campbell is on the side of law and order, yet is willing to brutalize, torture, invade homes, and make the sight of a constable a reason for the law abiding citizen to fear.

            The trajectory from Lord Peter and Father Brown to The Protectors to Spiral to Peaky Blinders follows stories of increasing corruption. None of these productions glorify crime and corruption but force us to face the reality of the tragedy of living in a darkly fallen world. They reveal how badly we yearn for a system within our communities that seeks justice with integrity, which in turn reveals why we mean it when we pray, “Thy kingdom come, they will be done on earth as it is in heaven.”

            The Peaky Blinders (2 seasons, 6 episodes each, 1 hour each episode available exclusively on Netflix and DVD)

A dear friend of mine, Wesley Hill, is author of the superb Washed and Waiting: Reflections on Christian Faithfulness and Homosexuality (Zondervan), and assistant professor of Biblical Studies at Trinity School for Ministry in Ambridge, Pennsylvania. With Ron Belgau, a graduate student in philosophy at St Louis University, Wes has begun a blog I wish to recommend.

The blog is called Spiritual Friendship: Musings on God Sexuality, Relationships and can be found here (www.spiritualfriendship.org). “The ancient and medieval Church had a lot of wisdom about friendship,” they say on the home page. “But this part of the tradition has been neglected and fallen into ruin. We seek to recover and rebuild Christian friendship, to make it habitable again by: first, rediscovering the wisdom about friendship found in the Christian tradition, and second, imagining and exploring new ways of living friendship in the contemporary world.”

If this statement of purpose seems unremarkable, or worse quaint, we have failed to grasp just how much we have lost in our modern world of mobility, technology, and busyness. If you spend time reading the posts on Spiritual Friendship you will find yourself listening in on serious Christians wrestling with issues that are in the forefront of the intersection between Christian orthodoxy and a world that has dismissed that faith as socially irrelevant, intolerant, and perhaps delusional. I need this help to be discerning, and am grateful for the fact that every time I read their posts I find myself learning from someone who seeks to take biblical orthodoxy seriously. Hill and Belgau describe their blog this way:

Spiritual Friendship was created by Ron Belgau and Wesley Hill out of frustration with the prevailing narratives about homosexuality in orthodox Christian circles, which focused either on political issues, or on reparative therapy in one form or another. Neither of these approaches, we believe, represents an adequate pastoral response to LGBT Christians.

In trying to create a new approach to homosexuality, we have drawn on the wisdom found in the broader Christian tradition. We explore God's calling, the nature of the Church, celibacy, our nature as embodied souls, and related topics. Thus, what began as questions addressed to our situation as celibate gay Christians has led to answers which may be of interest to a much larger Christian audience.

We believe in a traditionally Christian sexual ethic: that God created human beings male and female, and that all sexual intimacy outside of a faithful, lifelong marital union of a man and woman is contrary to His plan. But we also believe that marriage is not the only way of life God calls us to, and so we seek to explore different ways of serving God in celibacy. And Christ-centered friendship is, we believe, essential to that task.

I recommend Spiritual Friendship to you.

            There is a “casual vacancy” in Pagford. That what they call it when a member of the Parish Council—what in America would be termed the Town Council—dies unexpectedly so a post is suddenly vacant. In the greater scheme of things that would not seem to be the stuff of a novel, except for the loss and grief that has descended on Barry Fairchild’s wife and children. But J. K. Rowling is not content to allow us to see only the surface of life in this small and picturesque English village, but relentlessly burrows into the substance of lives and relationships to uncover the petty resentments, ordinary stresses, occasional illnesses, unspoken prejudices, fractured families and shattered hopes that ferment in the brokenness that is normally kept carefully out of sight. Rowling is not being unkind to the Pagford’s of the world, nor has she set up a mythical town for the setting of dark dealings and nasty secrets that could only be imagined in a piece of fiction. If we do not recognize ourselves as Pagfordians, regardless of where we live, we are not living in reality but in a world of our own imagining.

            The Casual Vacancy is a book that does not lie about the human condition. Rather, it sympathetically but relentlessly exposes it. What is extraordinary is that no one is tattled on in this story—each individual is allowed to tell their own story, in their own words. Each is allowed their own point of view, and each is convinced they understand their neighbor’s point of view and what is best for the common good. These are normal people, living ordinary lives—normal, ordinary, and broken.

            The village of Pagford lies in a valley through which a river winds. At its edge is “The Fields,” a government sponsored housing development that is feared and disliked because in its alleyways are addicts, dealers, unwed mothers, and too many people without jobs. The people of Pagford work for a living, and those that run shops and businesses tend not to hire applicants from The Fields, and if they do it is for less than a living wage. Overlooking the town, like a silent observer that acts as a sentinel for something that has been lost, perhaps irretrievably, is the ruins of a great abbey.

            We meet Howard and Shirley Millison, first citizens of Pagford who lead the effort on the Parish Council to cut funds for The Fields and close it’s free clinic/drug treatment center. Barry Fairbrother, born and raised in The Fields, having escaped it into middleclass existence, leads the opposition. His wife, Mary, is proud of Barry and much in love with him and their children, but secretly resents how much time The Fields takes him away from the family. We meet Parminder Jawanda, the general practitioner in Pagford, whose husband Vikram is a cardiologist. They are Sikhs, which causes them to stand out from the rest of the population. Vikram, seldom at home, concentrates his attention and affection on his two sons, both good students. Parminder is also on the Council, whose support of The Fields seems to be primarily support for Barry who has overcome such odds in his life. Parminder cannot understand why her younger daughter Sukhvinder isn’t more like her beautiful older sister who is not only a good student but confident and outgoing. We meet Krystal Weedon, who lives in The Fields, the older daughter of Tessa, a heroin addict and occasional prostitute, who struggles to care for Robbie, her 3 year old brother and keep the family intact. There is Kay, a social worker, and Miles Mollison, son of Howard and Shirley who becomes a candidate to replace Barry on the Council, and Stuart “Fats” Wall, whose unkind, relentless bullying drives Sukhvinder to the edge of despair. And there are more, characters like me, and you, and like our neighbors, for blessing and for curse. Rowling is a good enough writer to keep all these characters distinct as we read, and though they are all distinct from one another, I felt each was to some extent like me, or like someone I know.

            Rowling is careful to let each person have their say, and as the story unfolds we see Pagford, and life, through each character’s eyes. In doing so The Casual Vacancy becomes a parable for life in the West at the beginning of the 21^st century. The challenge of religious and cultural pluralism, the pressure of limited financial resources, the debate over the role of government, citizens who are certain they understand the other side but whose lifestyle insulates them from ever having to actually talk and listen to those with whom they disagree, and the thin layer of legality that maintains appearances while an ugly lack of civility poisons the community—all this is the wider cultural setting for Rowling’s novel.

            The Casual Vacancy is not great literature, but it is a very good novel and better than much of the fiction that competes for readers in the marketplace. It tells the truth about life and reality, and reflects, sadly and accurately the sort of pain and fragmentation that haunts our world and lies as hidden as is possible behind the drawn shades of the flats and houses that line the streets of the cities and towns where we live.

            Rowling does not provide an easy narrative with a hero and a villain, a simple conflict, a satisfying resolution, and a lovely sunset on the final page. The Casual Vacancy is peopled with ordinary folk, broken and yearning for hope in a world lying in the shadow of a ancient, rich tradition of moral wisdom and redemptive grace that is now in ruins, unappreciated and deemed irrelevant.

The Casual Vacancy by J. K. Rowling (New York, NY: Little, Brown and Company; 2012) 503 pages.

            A few weeks ago a dear friend confronted me about some unhealthy patterns of emotion she saw in me. She is, sadly, correct. The unhealthy patterns exist, have had a long history, and so far have been easier to cover up than actually face and address. That too, is unhealthy, and by God’s grace is undergoing change, though the process will be, I am assured by people who know such things, neither easy nor quick. So be it. One thing is certain: I don’t want to be the sort of person who exhibits such unhealthy patterns.

            I’d be more specific but am not comfortable doing that right now—maybe someday.

            Alas. The brokenness we must own as sons of Adam and daughters of Eve.

            In the weeks since our conversation I’ve thought and reflected, and prayed a lot about all this. Some things have become clearer and other things seem to need more clarity. The fact that patterns of emotion—of responses that seem so automatic as to be instinctual or reflexive—can remain below my threshold of consciousness is troubling. So much for thinking I was living an examined life.

            But then good friends willing to have hard conversations that initiate a period of hard learning, growth, and hopefully healing: this too is a form of examination, and a necessary if painful one. I am after all, finite as well as fallen.

            As I’ve wrestled with all this, some ideas about hardship caught my attention:

            “From repeated research studies, [Russ] Moxley [former senior fellow at the Center for Creative Leadership] became convinced that the most important element of marketplace leadership training concerns how persons learn through hardships. The center’s research summarizes the lessons learned from hardships in four categories: self-knowledge with a clarifying of values, sensitivity and compassion toward others, limits of personal control over circumstances, and flexibility…

            “Moxley… made another striking observation. He said that hardships are only useful when persons experiencing them have support systems that sustain them emotionally and that encourage them to reflect on the experience. ‘Hardships often evoke powerful and painful emotions, and an inability or unwillingness to face and reflect on this pain prevents learning.’ Vulnerability in safe relationships makes learning possible.” [p. 44-47]

            That seems so very correct. I do want to be known for those four things: self-knowledge with a clarifying of values, sensitivity and compassion toward others, limits of personal control over circumstances, and flexibility. And I am grateful for the safe relationships that envelop me that will, by grace, make growth possible.

Source: Resilient Ministry: What Pastors Told us about Surviving and Thriving by Bob Burns, Tasha D. Chapman & Donald C. Guthrie (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press; 2013).