The Jesus That Just Wouldn't Die

A personal review of Wise Blood by Flannery O’Connor

Both Flannery O’Connior’s novels feature characters who are trying to escape their faith. In Wise Blood, Hazel Motes tries to escape his faith in Jesus.

First, he tries to show everybody that he doesn’t need salvation, that he doesn’t need to be saved from his sin because there is no sin. And to prove it, he decided to buy a night with a hooker just to prove he can without any guilt, since there is no sin.

When that doesn’t work out so well, and leads more to him feeling embarrassed, he decides what he needs to do is start the “Church Without Christ.” He stands on top of his car and preaches that people don’t need salvation. People stop and listen for a while, but he only garners a handful of followers: a con artist who pretends he’s blid to get money, his daughter, and Enoch Emery. The con artist begins to corrupt Hazel’s idea of the church by asking for money, while Enoch feels like God is leading him to something and just follows “his blood,” which in the end, leads him to present Hazel with a replacement for Jesus in his new Church.

Hazel is disgusted by his lack of success in the church, as well as with his followers, so he decides to move on to the next town. He is excited by his new plans and stops to think about what he will do in the new town. He ends up drifting off to sleep, and wakes up to find a police officer near his car, which rests at the top of a hill. Hazel, unwilling to submit to any authority but his own, talks back to the police officer, who promptly pushes his car down the hill. Hazel watches dumb struck as his car, his church, and his means of escape crashes.

Without an escape, he finally succumbs to the wild ragged Jesus in his head, calling him off into the darkness. He blinds himself, and spends the rest of his days following the Jesus in his head, all the way back to Jerusalem where Jesus is born.

Yeah, he sounds crazy, but this is the kind of faith I respect, and sometimes even envy. The kind that you can’t escape, the kind you fight against but can’t get rid of, the kind that haunts you when you try to ignore it, the kind that will make you miserable until you give in to it.

Few people in the evangelical world have this faith, or at least, few people show this faith so others can see it. They prefer to show a faith that makes perfect sense, that makes everything better, and is perfect. They prefer to think of doubt and contradictions as enemies and obstacles.

But those few, those who when presented with the doubt and contradictions simply say “I know it doesn’t make sense, but I can’t shake the feeling that it’s right anyway,” are the people whose faith I sometimes want.

I seem to be on the other side. Or at least I was for a little while. I wanted faith, wanted it badly, but no matter what I did, I couldn’t get past the doubt and contradictions. Any faith in Jesus as my savior seemed false. And when I finally accepted that, I didn’t feel victorious. For a little while, I felt liberated, but with that liberation came a sense of loss. Not only because I would never find comfort in the church, as I had hoped, but because it seemed I had given into something I was fighting against.

So even though I ended up on the opposite side of Hazel Motes, I understand the quiet resignation to a belief system (or lack thereof) you have been trying to avoid. It may feel right and natural, but it still feels like you lost the game.