A Hitch in Time

But Jesus on his part did not entrust himself to them, because he knew all people and needed no one to bear witness about man, for he himself knew what was in man. – John 2:24-25

I love most of the Hitchcock movies like The Birds, Vertigo and Rear Window.  I think it was Frenzy that I saw in a movie theater with a friend of mine.  We were thoroughly unsophisticated hillbilly kids, and it was about too much for us.  We agreed to not tell anybody we had seen it.  It was guilt by association.

A similar film from the ‘80s is The Hitcher with Rutger Hauer and C. Thomas Howell.  I noticed I mentioned this movie in a post a couple of years ago, but we're expanding it a little here.  It’s like watching a copperhead in the weeds, repulsively fascinating.  If you are familiar with the plot, you know that Howell plays a youthful character named Jim Halsey who is delivering a “drive-away” Cadillac from Chicago to San Diego.  He makes the mistake of picking up Hauer’s ominous hitchhiker, John Ryder. 

First of all, there really aren’t any homosexual, homo-erotic undertones in the movies.  I’m not saying that couldn’t be read into it, as some have done, but I think it misses the much bigger point.  Ryder and Halsey -- one hauls and is the vehicle while the other rides and controls.  I can see how someone obsessed with sex or told, at some point, by a sex-obsessed person that it’s like catcher and pitcher might start thinking that.  Halsey and Ryder do get accused of being homosexual by a flagman on the road construction crew, but that is deliberate misdirection on Ryder’s part to defuse suspicion. 

Ryder is a psychotic but a very capable and, we might even say, supernaturally intelligent murderer.  He’s demonic.  He is able to follow Halsey undetected, appearing and disappearing at will.  The reason, so it seems, that he picks Halsey and puts him through so much torment is that he wants to be stopped.

It is almost as though Halsey and Ryder were the same person, a kind of Dr Jekyll/Mr. Hyde, Gollum/Smeagol, split personality.  Halsey wants to do the right thing, tries over and over to turn himself in, to escape from the avalanche of evil that he has innocently been caught up in.  Every time, Ryder comes from out of nowhere to intervene and keep Halsey trapped in the ever-tightening spiral.  The movie is on Youtube if you don’t remember it or have never seen it and want to watch it.  Most of the gore is off-screen.  There are dead, bloodied bodies around and a lot of implied horror, but we don’t witness so much of it as we would in the more current slasher movies.

Halsey might understand what Paul was talking about:  … For I have the desire to do what is right, but not the ability to carry it out …  I find it to be a law that when I want to do right, evil is right there with me … ( a little loosely from Romans 7:15-25).  

Every time we want to set things right, to rectify and put everything back the way it should be, something will come out of “nowhere” to upset and thwart our best-laid plans and good intentions.

Now my very exclusive coterie of readers, all four of you, I’m sure don’t have this problem.  For me, though, it’s not really out of “nowhere”.  I suspect that I know exactly where my hitcher is riding as well as his real identity.  I’d like to deny culpability for these sins, point the finger, and blame Ryder, and there’s no question that he needs to be stopped – to die.  But I’m the one who is responsible for stopping him. 

Near the end of The Hitcher, Ryder has been taken into custody by the Texas DPS and is being transported in chains to prison.  Halsey is riding with a DPS captain – who represents the Law.  Halsey says something like, “You’re not going to be able to hold him.”  The Law is good, but it is inadequate to deal with Ryder.  He can’t simply be imprisoned and confined.  We can’t pass off our obligation to the authority of the Law.  We brought him here.  We have to stop him.  In his better moments, in his brief moments of clarity before his nature reasserts itself, Ryder wants us to stop him.  He gives us opportunity after opportunity. 

So, Halsey, after setting the Law out by the side of the road (a mirror image of how the whole thing started) and taking the vehicle of the Law, turns around and goes after Ryder, catching up with the bus just as Ryder makes his escape.  With this last one-on-one confrontation, it is Halsey who goes free.

The Hitcher

They were filled with all manner of unrighteousness, evil, covetousness, malice. They are full of envy, murder, strife, deceit, maliciousness. They are gossips, slanderers, haters of God, insolent, haughty, boastful, inventors of evil, disobedient to parents, foolish, faithless, heartless, ruthless.  – Romans 1:29-31

Just as good works are the evidence of faith and love, so works of evil are not the source but the symptoms of a corrupt nature.   Jesus said that from the overflow of the heart the mouth speaks.  Our words and actions are manifestations of the state of our hearts.  Focusing on cleaning up our act can be beneficial, but it does not solve the root problem. 

I often refer to John7:17 where Jesus said:   If anyone's will is to do God's will, he will know whether the teaching is from God or whether I am speaking on my own authority.  There is a difference between merely doing God’s will and having one’s will aligned with God.  When we choose to do God’s will, to be obedient to everything we know about God, by a volitional act, a process of renewal begins.  It is such a radical process that the Lord refers to it as a new kind of birth.  Just as the natural life of a child is likely to involve mistakes, accidents, a series of illnesses, burned fingers, skinned knees, bumps, bruises, maybe even broken bones, the new spiritual life is not without its dangers, difficulties and setbacks.  

My aunt and uncle had ten kids and my uncle believed in everybody working.  We always milked our cows from the right side, just like we always mounted a horse on the left side.  Since there were plenty of kids to go around, my uncle would often have his offspring double-teaming a cow to get done faster.  The kid on the side would milk out the front quarters while another – usually a younger child – would sit behind the cow and milk out the back quarters.  This would, obviously, lead to an interesting situation should the animal decide to eliminate waste during the milking process.  The impending threat was, no doubt, a highly motivating factor for efficient and rapid effort on the part of the child in the rear.  Someone was visiting my uncle at milk-time, and, upon observing one of the boys – my cousin Doc, I think – laboring at a bovine’s rear end, he suggested that in the event of an accident it might be easier to have another child rather than to clean Doc up.  Doc’s still around so I don’t know whether he was usually fast or my uncle was merciful. 

A spiritual failure is not a reason to give up any more than being covered in cow manure or getting the chickenpox is a reason to trade in your kid for a new one.  The problem I keep seeing in Christianity for much of its history is a tendency to “discover” some doctrine, formula, concept, ritual, or whatever that results in a sudden transformation.  If a person is not completely remade and turned into a perfect specimen after being prayed over, baptized in water, sprinkled, fire-baptized, anointed, slain in the Spirit, etc., someone may conclude that the person is “not really saved”.  It’s not at all uncommon for the “failed” Christian to be among those who question his or her salvation.  The reason I know this is because I am, in the view of many, most likely, just such a failure. 

My intention is to do God’s will, and I sometimes get royally and roundly pissed off when I fail.  I don’t think there is anything wrong with that.  I think that is an understandable response to not being able to do something I think I ought to be able to do.   I am fighting an intelligent, stubborn and resourceful enemy – I know him very well.  He is not without his good points, but he has to die nonetheless.  I look at it this way:  Patton was a better warrior in France because he had fought Rommel in North Africa.  Ali was able to beat George Foreman in part because he had fought men like Sonny Liston and Joe Frazier – whether he won or lost those fights. 

If your goal in life is to be nice and to be liked, that’s all well and good.  But if your goal is to be Christ-like, to do God’s will, to be transformed for worlds and wars yet unknown, for eternity, for new heavens and new earths, that’s going to be a challenge.  Do you want to make an good impression on the folks in your Sunday School class or do you want to put down the old man and put on Christ?  Did you ever see the old ‘80s’ movie, The Hitcher?  The old nature may be “dead” or at least, supposedly, rendered inoperable, but, like the Hitcher -- the wicked John Ryder, it keeps popping up on us and doing damage.  My job is to stop my own old man.  It’s not my fault that I got Rutger Hauer while my brother got Shirley Temple or Richard Simmons.    

We can gauge how we are doing by the fruit that is borne in our lives, but the fruit just reveals the root.  We know already that the old nature is corrupted and our battle is to operate out of the new nature.  Falling and failing are not things we brag about, but a loss or a failure is not a reason to surrender.  There is no magic formula for kicking our hitcher out of the car.  We can’t just pass him by and hope for the best because he will just be waiting for us where we lest expect him … on down the road.