god's middle children - the bizzarre theology of 'Fight Club'

Back in high school, I saw a movie that my mom would have flipped over if she'd known I'd been watching it. It was called Fight Club, and I remember hearing on the news that upon its release, hordes of teenage boys had begun starting clubs where they'd beat each other senseless. When I watched it, I remember the frenetic and random brutality, and the dark, cruel humor of it speaking to the immature adolescent in me on some bizarre, primordial level. This seems to be a common perception of the it, but I'll only speak for myself when I say that it was like the movie was cracking jokes with the part of my soul which is best not to nourish.

The amazing thing about it was that while being brutal and sardonic, it also made you think. Well it made me think, at least. I'd all but forgotten about it until several weeks ago when my wife and I were having dinner with friends, and I noticed a copy of the book, on which the movie is based, nestled snugly in their bookcase. Remembering that I found the film somewhat thought-provoking, I asked if I could borrow it, and I read it in my spare moments over the course of the next couple days.

My experience with the book was much like my experience with the movie. While with my whole self I disagreed with book, some dark corner of me grinned and picked its nose. While reading, I would find myself thinking, ok, yeah, i could see that, then I'd put down the book and moment later I'd think, What?! Was I just agreeing with that?? One scene in the book, which I don't think happened in the movie, stood out to me because it was so rhetorically convincing, but so horrifying and pragmatically dangerous.

In Fight Club, the main character - whose name is never mentioned - becomes friends with an impulsive and charismatic man by the name of Tyler Durden. Durden is an anarchist with a lot of pent-up frustration and the main character's own frustration with life, coupled with a bomb destroying his apartment, entangles him with Durden. At this point in the story, the main character is caught up in plans that have long since been beyond his control. He's riding in a car with several of Tyler Durden's zealous follwers. The one driving is an auto mechanic, and is reciting some of Tyler's rhetoric to him:

The mechanic says, "If you're male and you're Christian and living in America, your father is your model for God. And if you never know your father, if your father bails out or dies or is never at home, what do you believe about God?"
. . .
"What you end up doing," the mechanic says, "is you spend your life searching for a father and God."
"What you have to consider," he says, "is the possibility that God doesn't like you. Could be, God hates us. This is not the worst thing that can happen."
How Tyler saw it was that getting God's attention for being bad was better than getting no attention at all. Maybe because God's hate is better than His indifference.
If you could choose to either be God's worst enemy or nothing, which would you choose?
We are God's middle children, according to Tyler Durden, with no special place in history and no special attention.
Unless we get God's attention, we have no hope of damnation or redemption.
Which is worse, hell or nothing?
Only if we're caught and punished can we be saved.
. . .
The lower you fall, the higher you'll fly. The farther you run, the more God wants you back.
"If the prodigal son had never left home," the mechanic says, "the fatted calf would still be alive."
It's not enough to be numbered with the grains of sand on the beach and the stars in the sky.

If ideological doctrines were to be judged solely on their rhetorical charisma (which, sadly, many are), this would be convincing enough for me to jump on board. And for the types of people attracted to Tyler Durden's cult in Fight Club, that's all that was needed: an emotionally convincing excuse to act out. But for rational people who want to live peacefully, something more than just passion and zeal is needed. Rationality requires substance.

A tactic that Tyler Durden utilizes (which will sound familiar to any Latter-day Saints reading this, as it is a tactic that LDS theology ascribes to Satan) is that he juxtaposes questions which lead to somewhat obvious answers, with assumptions that are seemingly related but aren't and that seem to follow but really don't. That is to say, that he takes a little grain of truth, and stirs it into a pot of lies.

He begins by making an observation about man's understanding of God, and how a man's Father becomes a kind of type for his perception of God (for more of my thoughts on this, check out this previous post). Then he uses the imperative voice next, claiming that "You have to consider ... the possibility that God doesn't like you."

After telling you what you have to consider, Tyler makes an irrational conclusion, assuming the truthfulness of the previous forced consideration, claiming that "getting God's attention for being bad was better than getting no attention at all." He then slides into speculation, stating that "maybe ... God's hate is better than his indifference."

In this particular bit of diatribe, Durden poses two questions which I find to be the most cunningly magnetic elements of his rhetoric. He asks, "If you could choose to be God's worst enemy or nothing, which would you choose?" and later, "Which is worse, hell or nothing?" These are questions geared to the common denominator inherent in all men: the desire to live and to exist. Absent any scholastic sophistry, human beings would almost always choose anything over being winked out of existence. Nobody wants to be nothing. Furthermore, these questions assume a dichotomy which is a false one. Durden quite stealthily avoids mentioning the other possibilities (like God's love in the first case, or heaven in the latter) and moves on as if he's proven that the only options are the ones he's laid out.

He then proceeds to lapse into counterintuitive and ironic maxims and ends with another rhetorically-charged statement, appealing to the natural human desire to be important to somebody; namely to God. "It's not enough to be numbered with the grains of sand on the beach and the stars in the sky."

Adolf Hitler would kneel down and shed a tear at the rhetorical elegance of Tyler Durden's propaganda. He appeals simultaneously to a man's need to be loved and to his most irrational tendencies toward aggression. And after I consult more than just the raw, emotional content of Durden's demagoguery and actually engage my mind, the mystical spell of his charisma is broken. But oh, what a spell it is.