I’ve always been fascinated with apocalyptic stories. I remember as a child pondering what a nuclear attack would bring. I remember the boxes of Civil Defense rations stuffed in the storage room off the Jr. High Gym. I remember when they hired an exterminator and we arrived at school to see the gym floor covered with dead roaches, probably those that had been feasting on the rations. I remember growing up in Paterson, that during the 70s was a sort of partial apocalyptic environment with two story row houses being condemned and sometimes burned down. Paterson could be quite apocalyptic.

Last year I watched the first season of “The Walking Dead” on Netflix and was disappointed by how few episodes they did. This year I picked it up again to see season 2 and was not disappointed. It had grown from a rather standard apocalyptic story to one that explored what it means to be human, to be civilized, to be good. The characters were constantly challenged by the question “What is this world creating me to be? Can we have hope? Is living worth it?”

I saw the wonderful piece in Books and Culture on the series and it really helped put words on why I like it. I had been challenged by someone saying something like “I don’t see how a Christian can watch something like that.” I didn’t feel apologetic or defensive about it. I knew I was getting something good from it.

I was curious about the original graphic novel series so I bought the first on one Kindle. In the intro the author says “With THE WALKING DEAD I want to explore how people deal with extreme situations and how these events CHANGE them.”

From the TV series in season 2 it appears he hit is mark.

As a pastor I see that life in the age of decay is an extreme situation, it just moves more slowly than a TV series does. One of the interesting thing about TWD zombies is that one at time they are manageable, but get a “herd” of them together and they’ll destroy the world. Very much a vision of humanity and its troubles.

At times in TWD the characters notice that their grim world isn’t THAT different from how life was before the viral outbreak. People died. People killed. People lived and loved. There was beauty, there was horror, there was tragedy, there was survival. The zombies just make it stark.

We’ll see if the show can maintain it’s quality in the long term. Few shows can.

What does the show do for me? It reminds me of our need for the gospel. I find American life is characterized by massive denial of the obvious. We deny death and failure and constantly promote the idea that the next political campaign, the next consumer product, the next medical breakthrough, the next psychological insight will bring shalom, and it never does.

People do deal with a slow apocalypse, often in similar ways to the TV characters. In many ways a slow apocalypse is a more difficult challenge than a dramatic one because the grays are grayer.

So cheers to TWD. May you work your craft well.