Recent rentals: "Half Nelson"

"HALF NELSON" had to come across my radar screen about five times before I finally decided to watch it. I'd heard that it centered on an idealistic teacher who is also a drug addict -- my immediate thought was that the film was either about him succumbing to his vice, which could easily be gritty and depressing, or it could be about him finding redemption, which would probably be nauseatingly simplistic. To my surprise (SORT-OF-SPOILER ALERT), neither one happens. Dan Dunne (Ryan Gosling) is simply a functioning addict, who has been for years and will probably continue to be so. The film's main theme is this dichotomy: How badly do we, as human beings, want to characterize and judge this person for what he is?

One of the characters in the film asks him if he's a communist, based on some of the books on his bookshelf. Another implies he's a deviant because he has formed a friendship with one of his students, a thirteen-year-old girl. There is no lasciviousness in his connection in her, but it doesn't stop people's suspicions. His students see him as a kind of hero, or at least as one adult who doesn't condescend to them, and awakens their interest in the wider world -- teaching history not as dates and names but about struggles between opposing systems of thought, tied together in push and counter-push.

Every character in the story wants to hang a label on Dan, and as an audience member you want to hang a label on him, but he argues the position that human beings are undoubtedly more than one thing; they can be opposite things at the same time, just as a tree trunk may be both crooked and straight. It takes time, attention, curiosity, listening, presence, and an open mind to understand the complexity of people, but for the sake of expedience we tend to simplify people to the components that we most value or most fear, and ignore the rest of them.

Christians are unfortunately very good at our rushes to judgment, which is odd considering that the Bible presents its characters unvarnished, filled with concurrent contradictions.I remember the first time that I understood that most of the "heroes" of the Bible were tremendously flawed, that they didn't walk around in glory and perfection in all that they did, that they struggled and rebelled and sinned and had conflicts. I was stunned. Were they really like me? Was I really like them? I thought that everyone around me, every Christian who looked to be cloaked in perfection, was through-and-through good. Yet here I was carrying around these secret compartments of guilt and hidden vices that I tried so hard to keep hidden.

To understand that we can be sinners and yet Christians, rebelling against God and yet being used by God at the same time, lifted such a burden off of me. To hide my inadequacies was only to perpetuate the myth that Christians were perfect, which only turns people away from God when they discover our hypocrisies. To confess my inadequacies, as I have tried to do in my friendships and in my writing, is to admit the multi-faceted nature of the human being, and the ability of God to meet us where we're at and engage us in full. I believe that our stories of surrender, not our stories of greatness, lead people to seek the God who is.

People will try to put labels on us, maybe great ones we don't deserve, or maybe hateful ones that contain only a silver of truth. Some human beings latch on to the good ones and fight against the bad; others are too bashful to accept the good and secretly cling to the bad. "Half Nelson" is about rejecting all labels, shrugging off others' definitions, and not being reduced. This is a good first step, I think, to being vulnerable and honest with others -- being honest and matter-of-fact with oneself.